A book reexamining the Warren Harding presidency? Sign me up! Harding is always at the bottom of presidential rankings, but is that earned? Published in 2022, author Ryan S. Walters tackles rehabilitating the 29th presidents’ reputation. Just attempting to do this is heresy according to mainstream historians. Michael Beschloss told the New York Times, “If you had to reach for a great revisionist mountain to climb, that would be it.” Sounds like Walters has an uphill battle. Does he succeed in his goal?

When I read one bio on each president a few years ago, I didn’t have many options when it came to Harding. Much of this is due to the scandals that started surfacing after Harding’s death (Harding died nearly three years into his term). His legacy was immediately smeared by progressive journalists like William Allen White and socialites like Alice Roosevelt Longworth. For the most part, their portrayals of the Harding presidency have stood unchallenged for a century. Nobody was rushing to write books on Warren Harding.

If you learned about Harding at all in school, you learned about the “Teapot Dome” scandal. Albert Fall, a member of Harding’s cabinet, accepted bribes for oil reserves. Walters points out that this is a very small scandal when compared to today’s corruption, and Harding himself was not involved. Harding did not personally benefit from any of the scandals in his administration. The president is responsible for those he appoints. But his appointments were also almost unanimously confirmed by the Senate.

There is also plenty of evidence to show that Harding fought corruption. We can only predict what Harding would have done with Teapot Dome as he died before the scandals surfaced. But Harding did address scandals such as those in the Veteran’s Bureau. He forced the resignation of bureau head Charles Forbes and was infuriated when he discovered corruption. This makes his historical reputation all the more bizarre because President Grant had far more corruption in his administration. Grant did nothing to address it and he’s enjoyed a recent surge in positive revisionist history.

Why all the hate towards Harding? Harding was a man of the people. He made his name running his newspaper business in Ohio and didn’t get involved in politics until much later in life. Walters covers the Election of 1920, where the new president would be following the intellectual Woodrow Wilson. The country was in rough shape. Race riots, massive unemployment, global uncertainty, Bolshevik revolutions abroad and at home. As if that were not enough, the Spanish Flu and World War I had killed and crippled hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Wilson is loved by progressive historians and his presidency is a stark contrast to Harding’s. It is interesting to see how presidents who presided over times of peace and prosperity are maligned for “not doing enough.” But Harding did succeed in every way. He fought for civil rights for blacks and Indians. Unemployment fell from 12 percent to 3 percent. GDP growth reached levels as high as 14 percent, improving quality of life for all Americans. His economic policies lead to a rapid recovery from the depression of 1921 (which is ignored today but was much worse than the crash of 1929). He signed several disarmament treaties post-WWI without getting us involved in entangling alliances like the League of Nations. He even freed political prisoners that Wilson jailed through his Sedition Acts. Head of the Socialist Party of America, Eugene Debs, was pardoned. Harding was no socialist, however he believed that all Americans were entitled to free speech.

This is a good book! The Harding presidency deserves a fresh take. Walters does more than just debunk some of the myths that have plagued Harding since his death. He goes even further to prove that not only was Harding not a bad president, but he was also a very good one. The statistics lay down an airtight argument. And at under 200 pages, Walters gets to the point without bogging down the reader. It’s a fun book that won’t ask for much of your time. I highly recommend!

You can purchase The Jazz Age President – Defending Warren G. Harding here.