Warren G. Harding is usually the guy who finishes dead last in those "Greatest Presidents" polls. You’ve seen them. He’s the punchline. The poster child for "I’m not cut out for this job." Honestly, he even admitted it himself, once famously telling a friend that he wasn't fit for the office and should never have been there.
But history is rarely that simple.
Was he a corrupt monster? No, not really. He was a genial, handsome newspaper editor from Ohio who looked exactly like what central casting would send over if you asked for a "President." He liked poker. He liked golf. He liked a good drink, even during Prohibition. But beneath the "Ohio Gang" scandals and the secret affairs that make modern tabloids look tame, there was a man trying to steer a broken country back to something resembling sanity.
The Return to Normalcy Nobody Understood
When Harding ran for office in 1920, the world was a mess. World War I had just ended, the Spanish Flu had killed hundreds of thousands, and the economy was basically in a tailspin. People were exhausted.
He campaigned on a phrase he basically coined: a "return to normalcy." Critics mocked him. They said "normalcy" wasn't even a real word (it was, just an old one). But voters didn't care about the grammar. They wanted the chaos to stop. Harding won in one of the biggest landslides in American history, pulling in over 60% of the popular vote.
He wasn't a deep thinker. He didn't have the academic ego of Woodrow Wilson or the "rough rider" energy of Teddy Roosevelt. He was just... Warren. And for a minute, that was exactly what America wanted.
Cutting the Fat and Inventing the Budget
Believe it or not, before Warren G. Harding, the U.S. government didn't have a unified budget system. Seriously. Different departments just sent their own wish lists to Congress whenever they felt like it.
Harding signed the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921.
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This created the Bureau of the Budget (now the OMB) and the General Accounting Office (GAO). It sounds boring, but it was a massive shift in how your tax dollars are managed. He brought in Charles Dawes to run it, a guy so efficient he actually started making the government's books make sense for the first time ever.
He also slashed taxes. Under his Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew Mellon, the top tax rate plummeted from 73% to around 25% over a few years. The "Roaring Twenties" didn't just happen by accident—Harding’s "hands-off" business approach lit the fuse.
The Teapot Dome Mess and the "Ohio Gang"
You can’t talk about Harding without talking about the dirt. He had a fatal flaw: he trusted his friends.
He brought a bunch of his buddies from Ohio to Washington—the "Ohio Gang"—and gave them high-level jobs. Some were great. Others were literal criminals.
The big one was the Teapot Dome Scandal.
His Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall, took about $400,000 in bribes (a fortune back then) to secretly lease federal oil reserves in Wyoming to private companies. Fall became the first Cabinet member in history to go to prison.
Then there was Charles Forbes at the Veterans' Bureau. He was basically looting the place, selling off medical supplies meant for WWI vets and taking kickbacks on hospital construction.
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Harding wasn't the one taking the money. But he was the one who let the thieves in the front door. He reportedly told journalist William Allen White, "I have no trouble with my enemies... but my damn friends, they're the ones that keep me walking the floor nights!"
A Civil Rights Record Most People Forget
Here is something they don't teach you in school: Harding was surprisingly bold on race.
In 1921, he went to Birmingham, Alabama.
This was the heart of the Jim Crow South. He stood in front of a segregated crowd—white people on one side, Black people on the other—and told them that the "problem of races is the problem of democracy everywhere."
He called for equal rights in voting and education.
The white audience stayed silent. The Black audience cheered. For a Republican president in the 20s to say that in Alabama took a level of "gumption" that his successors wouldn't show for decades. He also pushed for a federal anti-lynching bill (the Dyer Bill), though it was ultimately killed by a Southern Democrat filibuster in the Senate.
The Mysterious End in San Francisco
By 1923, the stress was killing him. He knew the scandals were about to break. He looked gray. His heart was enlarged, and he had high blood pressure that he treated with "purgatives" from a doctor who wasn't exactly a medical genius.
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He went on a "Voyage of Understanding" to Alaska and the West Coast to reconnect with the people. On the way back, he got sick.
Initially, doctors thought it was food poisoning from some bad crab. Then they thought it was a stroke. On August 2, 1923, while his wife Florence was reading him a magazine article in a San Francisco hotel, he suddenly shuddered and died.
The conspiracy theories started almost immediately.
Florence refused an autopsy. People said she poisoned him to save him from the shame of the coming scandals. Others said he committed suicide. Modern historians, looking at the evidence, are pretty sure it was just a massive heart attack. His heart simply gave out.
Why Harding Actually Matters Today
We like to put presidents in boxes. "Great" or "Terrible."
Harding is more of a mirror. He reflects the American desire to just "be left alone" after a period of massive crisis. He was a transitional figure who proved that you can't just ignore the corruption happening in your own hallway.
If you want to understand the modern administrative state, you have to look at Harding’s budget reforms. If you want to understand the roots of 20th-century conservatism, you look at his tax cuts. And if you want a cautionary tale about "cronyism," he is the ultimate example.
How to use this history:
- Audit your circle: Harding’s downfall wasn't his own greed, but the greed he tolerated in his friends. In business or leadership, the people you "bring with you" define your legacy more than your own actions do.
- Look for the "Boring" Wins: Don't ignore the administrative stuff. The Budget and Accounting Act wasn't flashy, but it’s still the backbone of federal finance.
- Context is King: Before judging a historical figure, look at the "mood" of the country when they took over. Sometimes a "weak" leader is exactly what a tired nation is looking for, even if it ends in a mess.
To get a better sense of the era, you might want to look into the 1921 Washington Naval Conference—it was Harding's biggest foreign policy win, where he actually got world powers to agree to scrap warships. It’s a rare moment of successful disarmament that rarely gets the credit it deserves.
Next Steps for You
- Research the "Ohio Gang": Look into Harry Daugherty and Jess Smith to see just how deep the White House bootlegging went.
- Read the Birmingham Speech: Look up the full transcript of his 1921 address; it’s a fascinating look at a President challenging his own base on the most sensitive issue of the time.
- Visit the Harding Home: If you're ever in Marion, Ohio, his house is a time capsule of that 1920 "front porch" campaign style.