I agree with you completely. I think that historians have overlooked the record of the Harding Administration. When Harding was elected in the 1920 General Election, America was in the doldrums, coming out of the Great War (WWI). The economy was in the tank, and the economy that Harding inherited was similar to the economy that Ronald Reagan faced some 60 years later.
Harding was a reform Conservative who initiated the Bureau of the Budget in order to get a handle on federal expenditures. He was also courageous in limiting government spending, cutting some one billion dollars in spending during his short time as POTUS, and going so far as to oppose the bonus to the WWI veterans which was a very unpopular thing to do on his part. Yet his selection of Mellon to the Treasury, as you mentioned, and his fiscal hawk stance on federal spending helped put the roar into the Roaring Twenties.
I visited the Harding House in Marion, Ohio last year, and I saw the pictures of the Harding family, and the picture of his paternal grandfather was very interesting. I believe that anyone viewing that picture would conclude that Harding's grandfather was indeed, black. JMHO.
From the PBS series American Experience:
"Warren Harding took office promising to undo many of the progressive policies of Woodrow Wilson's administration. Ushering in an era of conservative Republicanism, Harding wasted little time in cutting taxes on higher incomes and raising tariff rates."
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Sounds like a good President to me!
As for Harding's ancestry, pictures are an imperfect guide since many who are indisputably white with Mediterranean lineage can be said to have vaguely Black features in some respect. The better sense of the matter is to recognize that claims of Harding as being of mixed race are of uncertain truth and were generated by his adversaries and widely circulated in a racially charged historical context.
In the 1920 election, Republicans and Harding successfully courted the Black vote with appeals for racial equality and moderation. As President, Harding facilitated two modest reforms of interest to Blacks: anti-lynching legislation and withdrawal of the Marines from Haiti.
An academic essay available online points out that attacks on Harding's lineage were part of a Democratic campaign effort in the 1920 election that deliberately stirred white backlash:
“I believe in equality before the law. You can't give rights to the white man and deny them to the black man. But while I stand for that great, great principle, I do not mean that the white man and the black man must be forced to associate together in the acceptance of their rights.”
Harding address in Oklahoma City, October 9, 1920, as reported in The Daily Oklahoma, October 10, 1920.
"The greatest indignity suffered by Harding in his career was the allegation made during the campaign of 1920 that he had Negro forebears. This was part of the white backlash reactions that were aroused by the moderate concessions made by Harding and the Republicans to the rising Negro-rights movement. To be attacked for racial reasons was not a new experience for either Harding or the Republicans. The whites, especially Democratic ones, had been backlashing ever since anti-slavery days. The Hardings had been punished with "nigger talk" ever since they espoused anti-slavery sentiments in a Democratic section of Ohio in pre-Civil War times. It has been standard treatment in certain sections of society, especially in the Civil War and Reconstruction periods, for Republicans to be called "nigger worshippers" because of their interest in civil rights."
From: NEGRO RIGHTS AND WHITE BACKLASH IN THE CAMPAIGN OF 1920, by RANDOLPH C. DOWNES
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