dome sweet dome
Or, every American scandal you know about was the fault of Warren G. Harding.
Hello friends!
My fellow Americans are no strangers to “sudden changes to a thing you really assumed would be set in stone with this limited number of months left to go in the process.” So it’s my pleasure to share another surprise late-summer change:
Oliver Twist Book has a new title!
Yes, I know I just revealed the cover with the old title like two newsletters ago. Publishing is a many-headed beast, and sometimes those heads make decisions at different times. Frankly, I’m excited—this is essentially the working title I had in the first place, so it feels like my secret title has broken out to the big leagues.
The thought was that a book titled Fagin the Thief will more clearly attract my primary readership:
English majors who have recently caused a scene at brunch by yelling too loud about Little Em’ly in David Copperfield
Theater nerds with strong opinions about shows that have become impossible to stage
Book industry people who want to talk to you about James by Percival Everett
(Surprise: I am all three. Be your own best audience, they say.)
I’m beyond excited to share this book with you in just a few short months. It’s my favorite thing I’ve ever written by a big margin, and I’m equally excited that Doubleday is being so thoughtful about helping it reach more readers. Also, the team thanked me for my chill ability to go with the flow, a thing I am never thanked for, so take that.
All right! Now on to business and this week’s dirtbag:
Warren G. Harding, the Worst President You’ve Never Heard Of!
The fun thing about American public education is that you get taught about exactly nine US presidents before Franklin D. Roosevelt. Basically, if a president wasn’t a Founding Father or Abraham Lincoln and wouldn’t have known who Hitler was, I and most other Americans don’t know a damn thing about them.
So imagine my delight when I learned recently that every old-timey cartoonish presidential scandal I had ever even tangentially heard of was the work of this one man.
Ohio Is For Lovers
Harding was born in 1865 in northern Ohio, which I mention because this man was comically obsessed with Ohio. You know the people who make it their entire personality that they went on study abroad to Barcelona once? That’s Harding, but with Marion, Ohio.
After finishing high school, Harding went on to become the editor in chief of the Marion Star, a thriving local newspaper. That’s how you know this is a historical story: because of the phrase “thriving local newspaper” and because I didn’t say “unpaid intern writing for exposure” anywhere in it. Harding got interested in politics while a newspaper-man and became aligned with the Republican party, though he toned down his politics to write about whatever would help him sell more papers.
In the late 1880s, Harding met Florence Kling, a divorcée who was very cool in some ways and about to have a very bad time in others. Harding had been yelling at Florence’s dad in the papers, which somehow (?) evolved into the two of them defying their parents’ wishes and getting married in 1891. Florence was much better at business than Harding was, and basically she ran the Marion Star behind the scenes while Harding schmoozed and gladhanded his way around town.
The official White House biography of Harding, at this point, informs me that he also organized the Citizen’s Cornet Band of Marion, Ohio and played every brass instrument except for the slide trombone. They are so desperate for one nice thing to say about this man.
If It Looks Like a President and Ends WWI Like a President
Harding entered politics as a state senator for Ohio in 1899 and immediately became very popular. As far as I can tell, there were three main reasons for this:
He was extremely good at talking a lot while saying nothing
He loved taking bribes in exchange for political favors
He…looked like a president?
Seriously, that last one comes up in every source I consulted. The man just had an “early 20th century US president” aura. And to be fair, here are a bunch of the presidents no one knows anything about. Can you tell which one is Warren G. Harding?
Fair play to them, I guess.
Harding built his political career step by step, getting himself named lieutenant governor of Ohio in 1903. Now, if you’re wondering if that was even a real job in 1903, the answer is no, not really. He hung out and did nothing before getting himself elected US Senator in 1914 using the age-old tactic of “my Democratic opponent is a spy sent by the pope to take over Ohio using sketchy Catholic methods.”
His other big campaign tactic was the aforementioned ability to say a lot of words that didn’t mean a damn thing. An opponent described his stump speech as “an army of pompous phrases moving across the landscape in search of an idea,” which is stunningly savage for 1914. The word “bloviate” literally entered common use because of this man.
Insanely! This man! Was part of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and had an instrumental role in keeping the US out of the League of Nations at the end of WWI! This man! Whose biggest qualification was being an Ohio enthusiast who played the trumpet and vaguely looked like a president! I just do not understand what qualifications we use to distribute responsibility!
Where There’s Smoke, There’s Harding
Then, in 1920, Theodore Roosevelt died. You may know Theodore Roosevelt as one of the nine presidents Americans are taught about, or, more interestingly, the dad of Dirtbag Queen Alice Roosevelt. The point being, the Republican Party was suddenly left without a candidate for the upcoming presidential election.
Fortunately, they sure had a guy who vaguely resembled a president standing nearby. The entire premise of his primary campaign was that Harding was anodyne, boring, and less obviously hateable than anyone else running. Also, he was from Ohio! Remember Ohio?
This strategy worked, at best, medium well. By the time the 1920 Republican National Convention rolled around, the nomination was still very much uncertain. Harding was polling sixth across the country, which for context in the 2024 election cycle would make him Asa Hutchinson. If you said “who?”, exactly. One of the speech-givers said to the Convention, verbatim, “Say, why not elect Warren Harding?” and the crowd erupted into laughter.
But then! We arrive at Old-Timey Presidential Scandal I Didn’t Know Was Harding #1!
In what historians would later call the famous “smoke-filled room” because they knew Lin-Manuel Miranda would one day copyright “the room where it happened,” 15 party leaders got together and decided to figure out for themselves who the party nominee should be. The conversation most likely went something like this:
Republican 1: All of this democracy is exhausting.
Republican 2: Agreed. Fuck the people, let’s just figure this out for ourselves. Who would be most useful to us specifically?
Republican 3: Well, that Warren G. Harding dummy sure does love to take bribes.
Republican 2: And he can’t offend anyone because nothing he says means anything.
Republican 1: And have you seen how presidential he looks? Every time he walks by, I just start humming Hail to the Chief. I can’t help it.
Republican 3: So we’re all in for Harding?
Republican 2, blowing an ostentatious smoke ring: All in, baybee.
Reportedly, the party leaders then had to go find Harding to tell him “Surprise! You’re gonna be president!” They ran into him wandering drunk through the hallways of the hotel searching for his mistress’s room. This did not dissuade them in the slightest.
The nomination vote happened the next day, and Harding walked away with it. The vice presidential nomination was a little more contentious, but they had to hurry it up because the hotel bills were getting too expensive and the chair of the RNC needed to get home to do laundry. (A true fact, believe it or not.)
And so the Harding for President campaign was born!
In Which We Know What at Least One President of the United States Called His Penis and I Hate That for Our Culture
Usually I like to have a little more breathing room between scandals. But this is the story of Warren G. Harding, so we are packing a lot in here. Without further ado, let’s talk about Old-Timey Presidential Scandal I Did Not Realize Was Harding #2!
While Florence Harding was back home in Ohio running the newspaper and basically being smarter than her husband, Warren Harding was busy cavorting around the RNC with his mistress, as I said. However, I do have to specify which mistress.
The one at the RNC was Nan Britton, a woman 30 years younger than Harding who was hot and also vaguely interested in Republican politics. But if you’ve heard about Warren Harding’s mistress, it was probably the other one, an Ohio woman named Carrie Fulton Phillips who was actually friends with Florence. I swear to god, if Warren Harding was introduced in history classes as the messiest bitch ever to enter the Oval Office, more people would know his name.
Harding had been sleeping with Phillips since roughly 1901 as far as I can tell. It was definitely going on during his time as a US Senator, because Phillips tried to use their relationship to blackmail him against voting for the US’s involvement in WWI. But now he was the Republican nominee for president, so Harding went to the nominating committee and said “Hey, just so you know, if this comes up: I’m having an affair with my wife’s friend.” The committee, understandably, did not love this and tried to cover it up. And they did a pretty good job, too…
Until 2014, when Warren Harding’s private letters were finally unsealed and revealed to the public, and everyone realized that Harding was a big old perv who wrote sexy letters to Phillips and called his penis Jerry.
I’m not going to include excerpts of Harding’s bad erotic poetry in this newsletter. They make me want to die every time I read them. Just know that they are in the public domain if you ever want to know entirely too much about America’s 29th president. I will, however, share my favorite line: “Wish I could take you to Mount Jerry. Wonderful spot.”
Porch Majeure
OK. Back to the election.
Harding’s presidential campaign was something called a “front-porch campaign,” which as far as I can tell means that he sat at home and let the press come to him because he just loved Ohio so much. The benefit of this approach was that no one ever saw him, so he couldn’t fuck anything up in public. This probably wouldn’t have been my approach if I’d been nominated by back-room shenanigans and was polling a chill sixth place pre-convention, but then, as evidenced by everything about this story, I’m no Warren G. Harding.
The Harding campaign was also the first one where telemarketers were paid to call people up at home and talk to them about a candidate. I’ve often wondered who specifically I have to blame for the six emails and four texts I’ve received from the DNC while writing this very newsletter, and it’s good to know that the answer is Warren G. Harding.
Harding won in a landslide, and in his inaugural address he laid out what his presidency was going to be like: “Our most dangerous tendency is to expect too much from the government and at the same time to do too little for it.” In other words: I will be accepting bribes immediately, but please do not expect actual policy from me. He then went on vacation for a month.
P-O-T T-O G-O, You Can Take Teapot to Go
The actual policies of the Harding Administration were deeply boring and basically revolve around trying to jumpstart the economy after WWI and maybe not piss off Mexico so much. I skim over all this because Harding himself did not have a single opinion, fact, or preference on any issue whatsoever. His approach to governing was to put his friends in his Cabinet and then say “do whatever you want while I wander around looking presidential.”
I know I’m quoting people extensively this time around, but these quotes are just so good, you guys. For example, here’s what Harding said when asked about his opinion on post-war tax cuts: “I can’t make a damn thing out of this tax problem. I listen to one side, and they seem right, and then—God!—I talk to the other side, and they seem just as right.”
Like. Sir. You are the President.
The most interesting thing about Harding’s presidency is the sheer volume of bribery and backroom dealing that went on during its two short years. Which brings us to Old-Timey Presidential Scandal I Didn’t Know Was Harding #3!
Basically, Harding liked two things as president: being pro-business, and doing whatever his friends asked him to do. So when Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall said “it sure would be great if you gave me that government-owned land so my friend can start drilling for oil on it and we could all personally make a lot of money,” Harding shrugged his shoulders and signed the paperwork.
Fall made about $9 million in modern-day money off this deal, which raised suspicions when he suddenly began living like a multi-millionaire. After Harding’s death, the new administration investigated, and Fall was sent to prison.
This would later be known as the Teapot Dome Scandal, which I learned today is the name of the oil field in Wyoming and not just a whimsical name we gave this scandal because it blew the lid off America like the dome off a teapot. (Probably I should have realized this. I never thought to look it up.)
Shortly after the Teapot Dome exchange came—and surely you guessed it by this point—OTPSIDKWH #4! I won’t get into all the details of this one, because it involves real estate crime which I find deeply boring. But basically, Director of the Veterans Bureau Charles Forbes decided a great way to make money would be to claim building veterans’ hospitals cost a lot more than it actually did, getting the government to shell out extra money that he and his friends would keep. (You might recognize this as the Boss Tweed Approach.)
Harding found out about this eventually. However, instead of arresting Forbes, he told Forbes to go on the lam in Europe so no one at home would find out and blame Harding for yet-more corruption. A pro tip for you politicians out there: if you ever find yourself telling a friend to go on the lam, something has gone awry.
At Least He Died Doing What He Loved
Harding’s health was failing, and instead of resting up and maybe accomplishing something for once in his life, he decided to go on a “Voyage of Understanding.” This sounds like something you go on when the mushrooms are a little too good, but in fact was a cross-country trip making political speeches and holding rallies everywhere from Alaska to Puerto Rico.
He made it as far as San Francisco, where he gave a speech for an hour, played 18 holes of golf, and then had a heart attack. He died three days later, on August 2, 1923. His last words were to his wife Florence, who was reading a flattering article about him out loud: “That’s good. Go on, read some more.” Both Thomas Edison and Henry Ford attended Harding’s funeral, which should be a sign of just what a jackass he was in life.
Well, that’s all for this time, folks. Thanks as always for joining me on a whirlwind tour through the worst and weirdest history has to offer.
Until next time, be well, and if your name is Jerry I am so, so very sorry,
-Allison
Fun fact: eight presidents were from Ohio, more than any other state (I’m not counting VA bc it’s a tie but they were a state way longer)! More fun fact: I’d bet only 1% of Americans could name even 1 of these, and it is… Ulysses Grant. Even funner fact: this is bc all eight of them sucked ass! Most fun fact of all: a full 50% of the 8 managed to die while in office.
Dammit I almost never fess up to having been raised in Ohio, and yes we did have to learn this in school 😔
One can still stand on that front porch! Harding’s museum/home is quite interesting. The grandfather clock in his Ohio home stopped at the moment of his death in San Francisco. In 1939 a boy named John Wesley Dean was born in Marion. In his youth, John Dean had the Harding house on his newspaper route. Then in his early 30s Mr. Dean himself went on to help scandalize another Republican President, Richard Nixon.