Posted on 03/04/2011 11:42:19 AM PST by americanophile
Change isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. That’s what most of us have come to realize in recent years, whether the change proposed came from Pres. Barack Obama or the Tea Party movement. Still, most haven’t quite reached the point where we oppose change and fight for stability.
Maybe we ought to: Maybe sometimes it is the time for no change. That, at least, was the position of Warren Harding. Warren who? On the presidential roster, Harding is POTUS 43. No, that doesn’t mean he’s replaced George W. Bush: Harding’s “43” is his aggregate rank among presidents. Since there’s a tie somewhere in there, this means Harding is the worst-ranked president in the history of our land.
Still, the most despised chief exec had something to say about the issue that’s preoccupying the country. Nowhere did Harding put the case against change, and the case for realism, better than in his inaugural address, delivered 90 years ago today.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
A good reminder in a world of "too big to fail."
guess that’s why he is buried across the street from a shopping mall in Marion, Ohio?
The biggest irony of the Teapot Dome scandal was that it was actually implemented during the Clinton Administration, and not a single MSM outlet complained. The Elk Hills Petroleum Reserve was sold to a company in which Vice President Gore was heavily invested, yet Harding’s Teapot Dome is the one considered to be the bigger scandal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Naval_Conference
Sank the Japanese Navy without firing a shot and created the Roaring Twenties in America when the rest of the world was mired in the postwar depression.
Yes, he’s badly underrated by liberal historians.
The article is right, all in all he was quite a creditable president-- and he gave us Calvin Coolidge, another highly underrated republican president.
Squelching depression and promoting economic boom is antithetical to Democrat policy and interests. They thrive on misery, the worse the better. Obviously any president able to bring the country out of malaise will be an arch enemy of the Democrat party.
Teapot Dome was a nonissue as noted above when it occured and multiplied 100 fold by a Democrat administration.
You'll know things have gotten really bad for President Harding when a shopping mall is built over his grave.
But Coolidge, maybe, yes.
The depression that followed in the wake of Woodrow Wilson ended quickly under Harding, who lowered taxes. In addition to stimulating economy, decreasing taxes actually increased govt revenues due to higher economic activity that followed. This was the earliest basis for supply side economics.
Teapot dome was child’s play compared to what has gone on over the last 20 years.
Coolidge is vastly underrated. Hard to believe he was from MA.
Obviously you have never been there.
Perhaps in place of TR
Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. belongs on top of Mount Rushmore. I hope we can get him there before Spring.
North by Northwest.
If Harding had lived to finish his term he might have been able to clean up the mess made by Albert Fall and the other “Tea Pot Dome” crooks,
No, 1922 was a bad year economically. And it was bad “on the farm” throughout the 1920s. But Harding is great compared to most of his successors. It’s the American people who failed, not Harding.
I have been to the Harding grave, but I can’t place where the mall is. I don’t think it is across the street, however. Isn’t the grave in part of a city park? Isn’t the ‘’Marion Star’’ still downtown?
There is the cemetery to the north, a park to the west along with a hospital, and a hospital to the south. The mall is way south of there. Marion Star is still downtown I believe. My mother used to run a country route for them. I moved away years ago, but Mom still lives there, about a mile from the Memorial.
MA used to be a conservative Republican state, before the dark times, before Camelot. They were one of the few states that maintained a GOP legislature clear through the depression.
Anyway look at the 20th Century Presidents. Who was a credible conservative? Which of the Republicans were actually committed to decent constitutional governance?
Coolidge, Reagan. Harding, Taft perhaps (I’m not that well versed on his term). So yes Harding if only by process of elimination is one of the best Presidents of the 20th Century and definitely better than all but 2 that followed him. He didn’t do much to leave us worse off.
The worst list in my opinion belongs to the 20th Century democrats. Wilson, FDR, Truman, (Kennedy would have been but died before he could really mess things up), LBJ, Carter, Clinton, and his current majesty, the 19th century dems James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson, and the RINO Hoover who’s statist response to what would have been known as the Panic of 1929 turned it into the great depression.
For THE worst I’d have to go with FDR who created the modern socialist state and greatly prolonged the depression. Everyone ranks him as one of the “greatest”. The greastest at screwing up the country. Obviously he and his boy Truman are the most overrated, the later is especially overrated by conservatives, he was in fact an incompetent statist pig of the highest order and had bottom basement popularity for most of his Presidency.
Harding is easily the most screwed over by historians.
Grant wasn’t great or anything but I think they’re a little hard on him too. Apparently having a few corrupt cronies is the worst sin a (Republican only of course) President can have according to historians.
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