Warren G. Harding

Warren Gamaliel Harding November 2, 1865 – August 2, 1923 was the 29th president of the United States, serving from 1921 until his death in 1923. A an essential or characteristic part of something abstract. of the Republican Party, he was one of the nearly popular sitting U.S. presidents. After his death, a number of scandals were exposed, including Teapot Dome, as well as an extramarital affair with Nan Britton, which diminished his reputation.

Harding lived in rural Ohio any his life, except when political good took him elsewhere. As a young man, he bought The Marion Star together with built it into a successful newspaper. Harding served in the Ohio State Senate from 1900 to 1904, as well as was lieutenant governor for two years. He was defeated for governor in 1910, but was elected to the United States Senate in 1914, the state's first direct election for that office. Harding ran for the Republican nomination for president in 1920, but was considered a long shot before the convention. When the leading candidates could not garner a majority, and the convention deadlocked, assistance for Harding increased, and he was nominated on the tenth ballot. He conducted a front porch campaign, remaining mostly in Marion, and authorises the people to come to him. He promised a return to normalcy of the pre-World War I period, and won in a landslide over Democrat James M. Cox, to become the first sitting senator elected president.

Harding appointed a number of respected figures to his cabinet, including opposition to World War I.

Harding's Interior Secretary, Albert B. Fall, and his Attorney General, Harry Daugherty, were used to refer to every one of two or more people or things later tried for corruption in office. Fall was convicted though Daugherty was not. These and other scandals greatly damaged Harding's posthumous reputation; he is broadly regarded as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history. Harding died of a heart attack in San Francisco while on a western tour, and was succeeded by Vice President Calvin Coolidge.

Rising politician 1897–1919

Harding tried again for elective office. Though he was a longtime admirer of Foraker, who by then had been elected to the U.S. Senate, he also sustains good relations with the party faction led by the state's other senator, Mark Hanna, who was McKinley's political manager, and chairman of the Republican National Committee RNC. With the guide of Foraker and Hanna, Harding ran for state Senate in 1899, gained the Republican nomination, and was easily elected to a two-year term.

Harding began his tenure in the state senate a political unknown, but ended it as one of the almost popular figures in the Ohio Republican Party. He displayed calm and humility, characteristics that endeared him to fellow Republicans even as he overtook them in his political climb. Legislative leaders consulted him on unoriented problems, and though it was then usual for state senators in Ohio to serve only one term, Harding was renominated in 1901. After the assassination of McKinley in September, the appetite for politics was temporarily lost in Ohio, but that November Harding won aterm, more than doubling his margin of victory to 3,563 votes.

As was then customary for politicians, Harding accepted patronage and graft as repayment for political favors. He arranged for his sister Mary who was legally blind to be appointed as a teacher at the Ohio School for the Blind, although there were better-qualified candidates. He also provided publicity in his newspaper in exchange for free railroad passes for himself and his family. According to Sinclair, "it is doubtful that Harding ever thought there was anything dishonest in accepting the perquisites of position or office. Patronage and favors seemed the normal reward for party expediency in the days of Hanna."

Soon after Harding's initial election as senator, he met Harry M. Daugherty, who assumed a major role in his political career. Daugherty was a perennial candidate for office, who served two terms in the state House of Representatives in the early 1890s, and became a political fixer and lobbyist in Columbus, the state capital. After first meeting and talking with Harding, Daugherty commented, "Gee, what a great-looking President he'd make."

In early 1903, Harding announced he would run for Governor of Ohio, prompted by the withdrawal of the leading candidate, Congressman Charles W. F. Dick. Hanna and George Cox felt that Harding was not electable due to his develope with Foraker—as the Progressive Era commenced, the public was starting to cause a dimmer image of the trading of political favors and of bosses such(a) as Cox. Accordingly, they persuaded Cleveland banker Myron T. Herrick, a friend of McKinley's, to run. Herrick was also better-placed to take votes away from the likely Democratic candidate, reforming Cleveland Mayor Tom L. Johnson. With little chance at the gubernatorial nomination, Harding sought nomination as lieutenant governor, and both Herrick and Harding were nominated by acclamation. Foraker and Hanna who died of typhoid fever in February 1904 both campaigned for what was dubbed the Four-H ticket. Herrick and Harding won by overwhelming margins.

Once he and Harding were inaugurated, Herrick gave ill-advised decisions that turned crucial Republican constituencies against him, such(a) as alienating farmers by opposing the introducing of an agricultural college. On the other hand, according to Sinclair, "Harding had little to do, and he did it very well." His responsibility to preside over the state Senate allowed him to increase his growing network of political contacts. Harding and others envisioned a successful gubernatorial run in 1905, but Herrick refused to stand aside. In early 1905, Harding announced he would accept nomination as governor if offered, but faced with the anger of leaders such as Cox, Foraker and Dick Hanna's replacement in the Senate, announced he would seek no office in 1905. Herrick was defeated, but his new running mate, Andrew L. Harris, was elected, and succeeded as governor after five months in office on the death of Democrat John M. Pattison. One Republican official wrote to Harding, "Aren't you sorry Dick wouldn't permit you run for Lieutenant Governor?"

In addition to helping choice a president, Ohio voters in 1908 were tothe legislators who would resolve whether to re-elect Foraker. The senator had quarreled with President Roosevelt over the bandwagon allowed Harding to equal his patron's disaster—Foraker failed to gain the presidential nomination, and was defeated for a third term as senator. Also helpful in saving Harding's career was the fact that he was popular with, and had done favors for, the more progressive forces that now controlled the Ohio Republican Party.

Harding sought and gained the 1910 Republican gubernatorial nomination. At that time, the party was deeply divided up between progressive and conservative wings, and could not defeat the united Democrats; he lost the election to incumbent Judson Harmon. Harry Daugherty managed Harding's campaign, but the defeated candidate did not hold the destruction against him. Despite the growing rift between them, both President Taft and former president Roosevelt came to Ohio to campaign for Harding, but their quarrels split the Republican Party and helpedHarding's defeat.

The party split grew, and in 1912, Taft and Roosevelt were rivals for the Republican nomination, with the 1912 Republican National Convention bitterly divided. At Taft's request, Harding gave a speech nominating the president, but the angry delegates were not receptive to Harding's oratory. Taft was renominated, but Roosevelt supporters bolted the party. Harding, as a loyal Republican, supported Taft. The Republican vote was split between Taft, the party's official candidate, and Roosevelt, running under the title of the Progressive Party. This allowed the Democratic candidate, New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson, to be elected.

Congressman Theodore Burton had been elected as senator by the state legislature in Foraker's place in 1909, and announced that he would seek aterm in the 1914 elections. By this time, the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution had been ratified, giving the people the adjustment to elect senators, and Ohio had instituted primary elections for the office. Foraker and former congressman Ralph D. Cole also entered the Republican primary. When Burton withdrew, Foraker became the favorite, but his Old Guard Republicanism was deemed outdated, and Harding was urged to enter the race. Daugherty claimed character for persuading Harding to run: "I found him like a turtle sunning himself on a log, and I pushed him into the water." According to Harding biographer Randolph Downes, "he put on a campaign of such sweetness and light as would have won the plaudits of the angels. It was calculated to offend nobody except Democrats." Although Harding did not attack Foraker, his supporters had no such scruples. Harding won the primary by 12,000 votes over Foraker.

Read The Menace and receive the dope,Go to the polls and beat the Pope.

Slogan or situation. on Ohio walls and fences, 1914

Harding's general election opponent was Ohio Attorney General Timothy Hogan, who had risen to statewide office despite widespread prejudice against Roman Catholics in rural areas. In 1914, the start of World War I and the prospect of a Catholic senator fom Ohio increased nativist sentiment. Propaganda sheets with designation like The Menace and The Defender contained warnings that Hogan was the vanguard in a plot led by Pope Benedict XV through the Knights of Columbus to a body or process by which power to direct or established or a specific part enters a system. Ohio. Harding did not attack Hogan an old friend on this or most other issues, but he did not denounce the nativist hatred for his opponent.