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Twenty-ninth President, 1921-1923
Campaigning on the theme "Back to Normalcy," Warren G. Harding promised
the American people a rest from the policies of war. Harding did not
use the power of his office well, ceding much to the will of Congress,
who passed legislation to limit immigration, raised tariffs to their
highest rate ever, and--with the assistance of Secretary of the Treasury
Andrew Mellon--reduced income taxes and the national debt. It was
Harding's trusted advisors, however, members with whom he regularly
played poker and drank boot legged liquor, who turned his term in
office into a scandal-ridden mess. The most well-known was the Teapot
Dome Affair, in which the Secretary of the Interior took a large payoff
in return for drilling rights to federal land. There was also corruption
in the Office of the Alien Property Custodian, the Veteran's Bureau,
and elsewhere in the administration. Harding was never directly implicated
in any of these scandals, and before being fully investigated, he
died suddenly in San Francisco in his last year in office. The truth
about Harding's involvement in the graft that marred his administration
may never be known--after the president's death, his wife hurried
back to the White House and burned all of his official correspondence. |
