He did some good things, like the Naval Treaty. But he was lackluster, even as a senator from Ohio. One of the major bios of Harding is called Shadow of Blooming Grove, as he was dusky and suspected of being partly black. After nearly a century, a DNA test was taken from a Harding descendant, clearing the president of the perfidy. That’s just one instance of the power still being wielded by the Harding family to maintain his ‘reputation.’ However, recent DNA tests have also revealed what the family always denied -— Harding fathered Nan Britton’s daughter.
Much of Harding’s correspondence with an Ohio paramour, Carrie Philips, has been suppressed by the family, much as in their time Nan Britton’s The President’s Daughter was the object of attempts to bury it.
Harding had no direct hand in Teapot Dome, but his frequent sessions with the boys from K street were easily fueled by alcohol, illegal at the time. This included the Alaskan train trip where he moaned that his friends were more of a hazard than his enemies. His depressed demeanor and escapist behavior during the trip suggest Harding was beginning to find out what had been going in under his administration. It is surmised that his health was suffering from his nerves, resulting in his fatal heart attack days later, not from ‘eating bad oysters in Seattle.’
If a serial philanderer, who surrounded himself with thugs like Gaston Means, doesn’t deserve the contumely such as we attribute to the family Clinton in our day, then I suggest we’re dealing with a case of partisan-based denial, and not any particular lack of knowledge on my part.
Unlike Obama, he failed to completely vet his appointees.
Today’s Obama vetted his. If they shared his hate for America they were a shoe-in.