A nice round number for our 29th president. He was born 150 years ago today! As I told you guys yesterday, he actually shares a birthday with our 11th president, James Knox Polk. And they are our only two birthday twin presidents. Knowing I couldn't do two in one day, as much as I racked my brain thinking about how I could cram it in, I just didn't think the boys would retain nearly as much, and opted to go with Polk first (since he's older and all), and Harding second.
So, Happy Belated Birthday, Warren!
Warren Gamiliel Harding was born on November 2, 1865 in Corisca, Ohio (it's Blooming Grove these days). His parents, George and Phoebe were both doctors....
...and Warren had four sisters and one brother. Oh, and his mother called him "Winnie"!
To many, including Warren himself, he had an ideal, all-American childhood. He grew up in a small town, attended a one room school house, enjoyed summers playing in the creek and performing in the village band (he was actually pretty good at the coronet. He was likable, and popular, and charismatic.
His father also owned a newspaper where Warren worked as a boy and learned about journalism.
At age 14, a bright Warren was off to college at Ohio Central, where he edited the campus newspaper and became an accomplished public speaker. He graduated when he was only 17.
He worked for awhile as a teacher, and then sold insurance.
But then, he and two of his friends purchased a failing newspaper, the Marion Daily Star (fittingly in Marion, Ohio). Under Warren's control, the paper was brought back from the dead in part thanks to Warren's good-natured manners, and strong sense of community. He avoided printing stories critic f others and shared company profits with employees, because he was just that nice of a guy.
In 1981, it was love at first sight when he met Florence, a wealthy widow who taught piano. She had a good business sense, and access to ample financial resources, and helped the paper to prosper.
The couple married and had no children together.
In 1898, at his wife's urging, Warren embarked on a political career. A charming, handsome, likable Warren won a seat in the Ohio legislature and served two terms, later he became lieutenant governor. He was a fair politician and people liked him.
After a break from politics, and going back to the newspaper business, Warren decided he wanted back in the game. He won election to the U.S. Senate in a hard fought campaign.
As Senator he actively supported business interests and advocated for protective tariffs. Like other Republicans, he opposed Woodrow Wilson's 14 points, and was in favor of Prohibition.
Warren was often on the winning side of votes in the Senate...
...and proved to be more than capable. When he gave a speech nominating William Taft for a second term, people took note.
Though Woodrow Wilson won the election, Warren had been noticed. A political insiders decided Harding looked presidential and had the track record to be president. His upbringing was classically homegrown, he was well-known by Republican leaders, had no major political enemies, was right on all the issues, and represented the critically important state of Ohio. Plus, when asked if he had any skeltons in his closet, he told the party he was squeeky clean. They couldn't ask for a better candidate.
Warren ran on a "return to normalcy" after the war, giving speeches and campaigning from his front porch just like William McKinley and Benjamin Harrison. He even had his porch redesigned to look like McKinley's. And he was so popular, he had to have his grass replaced with stone (since it was all dead from being trampled on).
Warren selected Calvin Coolidge as his running mate. They were running against another Ohioian, James M. Cox... whose running mate was none other than FDR.
Warren Harding was elected, obviously, in the first election in which woman could vote thanks to the 19th amendment. At the age of 55, on March 4, 1921 Warren Harding was sworn in as our 29th president. He and Florence had a low-key inauguration day, without the customary parades or balls. They just had a brief reception at the White House.
The first couple was likable enough. Florence, who was known as "The Duchess", adapted well to the White House...
...where she gave notably elegant parties.
...the loving first power couple kept a bible on their nightstand, and a doting Warren took into account whatever his wife had to say. he used her time in the White House to promote women's rights, veterans benefits and the protection of animals. (Speaking of which, the first dog, Laddie Boy lived the high life at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. He even had his own chair at cabinet meetings!)
Warren, meanwhile, spent his time in the White House yachting and playing golf at least twice a week (fun fact: he was the first president to have a golf course named after him).
Once in office, Warren followed a predominately pro-business conservative Republican agenda. Under his watch, WWI officially ended with the Treaty of Paris, and the postwar depression seemed to be giving way to a new surge of prosperity. Newspapers hailed Warren as a wise statesman carrying out his campaign promises. ("Less government in business and more business in government")
Additionally, Warren spoke out for Civil Right. He was against lynchings of African American and ordered desegregation in the White House and in D.C. (What a great guy!)
He put some awesome, likable guys in various offices. He made Herbert Hoover his Secretary of Commerce, and made all of William Howard Taft's dreams come rue when he made him Supreme Court Justice.
He also brought along a lot of his friends from his home state in what people called the "Ohio Gang".
By the summer of 1923, there were rumors that the Ohio Gang wasn't all they seemed. But, Warren embarked on a cross country tour to promote his policies and calm anyone's fears. He even visited Alaska, the first president to do so.
Florence, the other half of the first power couple, was by his side for the "Voyage of Understanding" as the trip was being called. She was alone, reading to her husband when he suffered a heart attack and died on August 2, in a San Francisco hotel. In the early morning hours of August 3, Calvin Coolidge was sworn in as the 30th president.
Warren's sudden death shocked the world, and he was deeply mourned. He was called a man of peace in many European newspapers, American journalists praised him lavishly, with some saying he had given his life for the country.
His body was returned from the west coast to D.C by train, as millions of people gathered along the railroad tracks to pay their respects. Coolidge, Taft, and Hoover all attended the large funeral, and elaborate marble tomb was constructed. (We've been there!)
And that's it for Warren Harding. Ta Da!
Except, not exactly. That's just how people in 1921-1923 saw Warren Harding.
That isn't exactly what was going on. You see, Warren Harding had a strategy his whole life: present a sweet an unassuming front while aggressively backdooring his way into getting everything he ever wanted. It can be seen in everything he ever did. He might have been good looking, and put on a good front, but behind closed doors he was calculating, and he was sneaky.
So, let's rewind and take a peek behind the closed doors, to see what Warren Harding was REALLY like.
Let's start with that newspaper he turned around, The Marion Star. It's true he started with nothing, and through working hard he turned the paper around. But, it wasn't just hard work. Warren stalled, bluffed, withheld payments and manipulated behind the scenes to take down the other newspaper in town, trashing it every chance he got. His principal opponent was Amos, the financier of Marion's most popular newspaper, the Marion Independent. Competition between thsoe two got so heated that one argument was apparently settled at gunpoint.
Warren, ultimately got the best of his rival though-- he married Amos's daughter, Florence! (Gasp!!) Amos was so mad he didn't talk to his daughter for 8 years.
What makes that even more shocking, is the fact that Amos was raising Florence's SON! (That's right she had a kid!) His name was Marshall, and he actually died in his early 30's from alcoholism and is buried in an unmarked grave. Yikes.
You see, Florence wasn't exactly as she seemed either. That story about being a widow she had sold to the press? Not true, she was actually divorced. Her ex-husband and son were forbidden topics at the White House and in the press.
And that loving couple, with a fairytale love at first romance, they sold? That wasn't exactly the case either. Warren was a serial cheater. Look, tons of presidents have had affairs. But Warren's is probably the sleaziest and sneakiest.
His affair wih a young Ohio woman named Carrie started when Florence was in the hospital undergoing tretment for a kidney ailment. Not only that, Carrie was married as well-- to a LONG TIME FRIEND OF WARRENS, and not only that, when it started that friend was in a mental institution. Like, come, on.
That affair lasted 15 years. But don't mistake this for a Lucy/FDR kind of thing. Warren was sleazy about it, referring to his "Jerry" and her "seashell"... well, um... yea in letters he wrote ON SENATE STATIONARY. Fun fact: You know how Warren told the Republicans he had no skeletons in his closet? Well, they did find out about Carrie, and she blackmailed them into paying her off. She's the only person (known) to have successfully blackmailed a political party.
But Carrie wasn't the only affair. Cue: Nan Britton.
Nan was a star-struck fan girl, with newspaper clippings about Warren all over her walls, 30 years Warren's junior. She wrote a tell all book, which was sold door to door wrapped in brown paper (since it was so explicit) where she claimed to have had "relations" with Warren in a White House closet with the president while secret agents stood outside keeping watch. (True story: The kindle edition of the book is only $1.99, and I'm totally considering getting it). This affair, she said, led to her getting pregnant. She had a daughter named Elizabeth. And though Warren never acknowledged her and never met her, Nan claimed he paid her child support (in the amount of $500 a month).
For nearly 100 years, people have doubted Nan's claim that Elizabeth was Warren's daughter. But, just two months ago, the news came out they were a DNA match.
Now, I did these birthday info sheets back in June, and Elizabeth as his daughter was just a rumor, so I left her off the info sheet. Looks like I need to do some updating!
Carrie and Nan were not the only affairs. Some say he had as many as 7 mistresses. Some claim he even picked up a STD from a prostitute.
Florence might have put on a good front too, but she was (obviously) deeply hurt and forever distrustful of her husband, but she stayed and pushed his political career anyway. She knew Warren was actually unorganized and lacked ambition, and was relaying n her to push him with her confidence and tenacity. Check out her quote below.
Once he got into politics, he wasn't as fair and square as he might have appeared to be. He did favors for city bosses who in turn, helped him advance in Ohio politics...
...which helped him advance to the U.S. Senate where he might have given the appearance of holding strong views on the issues, but he wasn't really passionate of anything. He wasn't just on the winning side, because he was "right" on the issues. He was on the winning side, because he was voting based on what he thought was going to win. It wasn't about morals, it was about backing the right horse to avoid being left behind. That's when he did vote. According to his congressional voting record, he missed two thirds of the votes held during his tenure as Senator.
Take that woman's suffrage vote. He "supported" it, but he didn't actually vote for it. Because he wasn't sure it would win. Many people liked to claim women that election were shallow and voted for the better looking candidate, and that's why Harding won. But that's probably not exactly true, it was probably more because of his "support" (which was really just hot air, and not actually backed up by anything).
So, the Harding's are now in the White House. Those elegant parties from the guy who supported Prohibition? Well, it's got less of a Martha Stewart vibe, and more of a frat party bribe. With heavy air filed with tobacco smoke, and trays and bottles containing every imaginable brand of whiskey.
And he wasn't exactly spending ll of his time yachting and golfing. He had a few less- country club-esque habits. Twice a week, he held poker games at the White House (complete, of course, with as much whiskey as you could possibly want). In one game, he gambled away THE WHITE HOUSE CHINA!
And at this point, you don't need me to tell you how hypocritical the bible on the nightstand was. That loving first couple, not so much. They didn't even sleep in the same bed.
Mistresses, alcohol, poker playing (and even voting certain ways just to make you president with no consulting your conscious), are not enough to make you a bad president, even if you are a sleazy, hard-partying whiskey aficionado. But, filling your cabinet with corrupt liars who steal and break the law is.
You see, when Warren became president, he quickly found out he was out of his league. He really didn't know how to lead. His public persona was pretty different than his private one. (The truth was he wasn't really all that respected in the first place. The first time he spoke in front of the Republican Party, his own party booed him. And Alice Roosevelt called him a slob). Warren saw the job mainly as ceremonial, leaving the government work to his subordinates. The problem was his subordinates were his friends: his slimey, crooked, distrustful friends.
In his mere two and a half years at the helm, more crime and corruption shrouded the Harding adminstration than any other administration in history. (Sam Grant's friends had nothing on Warren's). The never ending supply of whiskey in the White House was all thanks to the shady backroom frat of the Ohio Gang. These guys took up jobs at the Justice Department and practically ran an entire bootlegging operation.
His friends turned out to be crooks who went on to take bribes, create under the table deals, and generally run crooked enterprises with government resources. Harry Daughtry, the president's campaign manager turned U.S. attorney allowed select distillers to peddle "medicinal liquor" during Prohibition through a legal loophole in exchange for bribes and kickbacks.
The head of the Office of Alien Property and the Justice Departments were also accepting bribes, and the head of the Veterans Bureau was skimming profits while he organized a small drug ring! But nobody was as bold as Albert Fall, the Secretary of the Interior. He was the guy responsible for the greatest scandal of all: The Teapot Dome Scandal.
Dome is a rock formation in Wyoming shaped similar to a teapot, and situated above what was once a large U.S. Navy oil reserve. Albert Fall, took bribes and secretly leased it to a private oil company. In exchange, Albert got nearly $400,000 in cash for the deal.
At least six members of the Ohio Gang eventually served jail time, including Albert Fall. And t least one committed suicide to avoid trial.
Not every single one of Harding's cabinet members were corrupt. Take Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover, for example. Warren had taken Herbert on his "Voyage of Understanding". On the trip, Warren asked Hoover what Hoover would do if he knew of some great scandal, whether to publicize it or bury it. Hoover, being the super cool geologist/humanitarian/my birthday twin that he is, of course said Warren should make public whatever he knew. Hoover told him he would get the credit for his integrity. When he asked Warren for the details though, Warren wouldn't tell him.
Nobody would ever know what exactly Warren knew or when he knew it though, because all of thsoe secrets died when he did.
For a guy like Warren, it's only appropriate for even his death to be suspicious. In some circles, rumors spread that Florence had poisoned him to prevent him from facing charges of corruption and being impeached. I mean, she was alone with him when she died, refused an autopsy, and destroyed virtually all his private papers immediately upon his death. (She claims it was to protect his legacy). And to be fair, there's no actual evidence she poisoned him.
His sudden and untimely death left a whole lot of questions unanswered in regards to his involvement in, and knowledge of the scandals that rocked his Cabinet. Scandals that didn't even really come to light until he was gone. But, I think we can all agree he wasn't the greatest person to ever hold the office of the presidency.
Many historians say he wasn't corrupt, he just had the misfortune of having terrible friends (he once said "I have no trouble with my enemies, but my friends, they're the one's who keep me walking the floor at night"). But there is no denying, at least for a time, he placed friends into powerful government positions for which they were otherwise unqualified, and then turned a blind eye to how they operated. Make no mistake, there was a reason all those awful people gravitated toward Warren in the first place.
Serving a little over two years, he was the shortest serving president of the 20th century. Most historians consider him one of the worst presidents. He ranks in the bottom three along with Andrew Johnson, and James Buchanan. Not only were his friends corrupt (and he maybe possibly was as well), but he was unprofessional, lacked the sort of work ethic and vision required to run a country.
And that my friends, is how Warren Harding is seen today.
We added our props to the board..
...some fun facts...
...his quote...
... and his biggest presidential issues.
...did our owl mail...
We made our birthday cards...
And then we presented our birthday twins we learned about yesterday.
Peyton shares a birthday with Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Supreme Court Justice.
Asa shares a birthday with Reggie Fils-aime the COO of Nintendo of America.
I, of course, share my birthday with our nations greatest hero, Herbert Hoover.
Calib shares a birthday with Morgan Freeman.
And Hayden shares a birthday with Charles Dickens.
I hung those up along with our birthday cards. Only three more presidents in November!
Oh, and we did our twitter hashtag.
For dinner, we had Warren Harding's favorite: Chicken Pot Pie. On president's birthday's we do our "favorite thing" about that president. Today was a little harder to come up with something than usual.
That's it. You guys, I only have SIX presidents left. In case you're wondering, they are : James Garfield, Franklin Pierce, Zachary Taylor, Martin Van Buren, Woodrow Wilson, and Andrew Johnson.
Can you even believe I've done this whole thing 37 times? That's a little nuts.
Next Up: We've got some office days (on a work from home week, blah!), but next "weekend" we'll be doing the Food and Wine Festival one more time!
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