Warren Gamaliel Harding

Warren Gamaliel Harding (commonly referred to in the textbook as "Warren G. Harding", or "Harding") was the 29th president of the United States. He is described as a weak-minded, weak-spined president who, with the best of intentions, enacted brilliant cabinet members, but also friends of his, of whom he protected despite their scandals and shortcomings.

Textbook's Spiel (720)
Warren G. Harding, inaugurated in 1921,  looked  presidential. With erect figure, broad shoulders, high forehead, bushy eyebrows, and graying hair, he was one of the best-liked men of his generation. An easygoing, warm-handed backslapper, he exuded graciousness and love of people. So kindly was his nature that he would brush off ants rather than crush them.

Yet the charming, smiling exterior concealed a weak, inept interior. With a mediocre mind, Harding quickly found himself beyond his depth in the presidency. "God! What a job!" was his anguished cry on one occasion.

Harding, like Grant, was unable to detect moral halitosis in his assoicates, and he was soon surrounded by his poker-playing, shirt-sleeved cronies of the "Ohio Gang." Harding was "one of the boys." He hated to hurt people's feelings, especially those of his friends, by saying no, and designing political leeches capitalized on this weakness. The difference between George Washington and Warren Harding, ran a current quip, was that while Washington could not tell a lie, Harding could not tell a liar. He "was not a bad man," said one Washington observer. "He was just a slob."

Candidate Harding, who admitted to his scanty mental furnishings, had promsed to gather about him the "best minds" of the party. Charles Evans Hughes--masterful, imperious, incisive, brilliant - brought to the position of secretary of state a dominating if somewhat conservative leadership. The new secretary of the Treasury was a lean and elderly Pittsburgh aluminum king, Andrew W. Mellon, multimillionaire collector of the paintings that are now displayed in Washington as his gift to the nation. Chubby-faced Herbert Hoover, famed feeder of the Belgians and wartime food administrator, became secretary of commerce. An energetic businessman and engineer, he raised his second-rate cabinet post to first-rate importance, especially in drumming up foregin trade for U.S. manufacturers.

But the "best minds" of the cabinet were largely offset by two of the worst. Senator Albert B. Fall of New Mexico, a scheming anticonservationalist, was appointed secretary of the interior. As guardian of the nation's natural resources, he resembled the wold hired to protect the sheep. Harry M. Daughtery, a small-town lawyer but a big-time crook in the "Ohio Gang," was supposed to prosecute wrongdoers as attorney general.