The 29th President of the United States died 91 years ago today on Aug. 2, 1923 of an apparent heart attack in San Francisco, although initial reports attributed his death to a massive stroke. Warren G. Harding, 57, was in the midst of a cross-country tour he called the Voyage of Understanding, which he had undertaken as a series of scandals began to rock his administration. According to newspaper editor/politician William Allen White, President Harding told him, My God, this is a hell of a job! I have no trouble with my enemies. I can take care of my enemies all right. But my damn friends, my God-damn friends, White, theyre the ones that keep me walking the floor nights! Harding, who served in the White House for 29 months, is considered by most historians as one of our nations most incompetent Presidents. However, his Administration was not without its significant accomplishments, including Congressional passage of the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 and the 1922 Washington Conference on Naval Disarmament. Promising a return to normalcy, he was elected in 1920 in a landslide with more than 60 percent of the popular vote. Only two men have won with a higher percentage of the popular vote in a Presidential election -- Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 in the wake of the assassination of President Kennedy, and Richard M. Nixon in 1972 as he was winding down the Vietnam War. In the years after Hardings death, macabre stories circulated about the circumstances under which he died, suggesting murder by his wife or Presidential intimates, writes Lewis Gould in his 2003 book, Grand Old Party: A History of the Republicans. Sensation seekers and confidence men provided lurid accounts of how the conspiracy had supposedly been carried out. Since there was no autopsy of the President, theories about his death stemmed from this grain of fact and became ever more elaborate. The simple reality was that Warren G. Harding was a middle-aged man with a bad heart who indulged in all the wrong habits for a person in his condition. That he suffered a fatal heart attack was hardly a surprise. nytimes/learning/general/onthisday/big/0802.html
Posted on: Sun, 03 Aug 2014 02:22:47 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015