🎩Warren G. Harding

29th President · 1921–1923 · Republican

Warren G. Harding promised a "return to normalcy" after World War I and Woodrow Wilson's illness. He won the 1920 election in the largest popular-vote landslide to that date. His administration produced the tax cuts and immigration restrictions of the postwar period — but also the Teapot Dome scandal, one of the worst corruption scandals in presidential history. Harding died suddenly in office in 1923, the Teapot Dome investigations breaking just after his death.

Newspaper Man to President

Harding was the publisher of the Marion Star newspaper in Ohio before entering state politics. He served one term as a U.S. senator from Ohio — a mostly undistinguished tenure — before emerging as a compromise nominee at the deadlocked 1920 Republican convention. He won the general election with 60% of the popular vote over Democrat James M. Cox and vice-presidential candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Return to Normalcy

Harding cut federal taxes and spending, raised tariffs, restricted immigration through the Emergency Quota Act, and brought the Russian Civil War refugees home. The decade of the 1920s began with economic growth, Prohibition enforcement, and Republican dominance that would last until the 1932 election.

Teapot Dome

The Teapot Dome scandal, named for the Wyoming oil reserve at its center, saw Interior Secretary Albert Fall secretly lease federal petroleum reserves to private oil companies in return for personal bribes. Fall became the first Cabinet member to be imprisoned for a crime committed in office. Other Harding administration scandals involved the Veterans Bureau, the Justice Department, and the Alien Property Custodian. Harding himself was probably not personally corrupt, but his loyalty to the "Ohio Gang" of cronies enabled the corruption.

Sudden Death

Harding collapsed and died suddenly in a San Francisco hotel on August 2, 1923, while returning from a trip to Alaska. The official cause was a heart attack; rumors of poisoning circulated for decades but without evidence. The full extent of Teapot Dome emerged in the months after his death, devastating his posthumous reputation.

Harding Trivia

• Harding is consistently ranked among the worst U.S. presidents, largely because of Teapot Dome.
• DNA testing in 2015 confirmed that Harding fathered a daughter with his mistress Nan Britton — a fact she claimed in 1927 and was widely doubted for nearly 90 years.
• He was the first president to ride to his inauguration in a car.
• Harding's Ohio funeral train drew some of the largest mourning crowds ever gathered for a U.S. president.

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