Warren Harding

I don't recall exactly where I read it, or even who wrote it, but I recently ran across an op-ed piece in which the writer made a statement to the effect that "History will judge George W. Bush as harshly as it has judged Warren G. Harding."

Of the relative handful of men selected to hold the office of President of the United States, Warren Harding is always cited as being the "worst of the worst" and a man who's only redeeming quality is that he died quietly and without seriously inconveniencing either his country or his party. To be sure, both Harding and Bush

fils were not as intellectual as a Woodrow Wilson or as personable as a Harry Truman or a Ronald Reagan, and both were guilty of confusing personal loyalty with administrative competence in their subordinates. But why is Harding's name now synonymous with incompetence and malfeasance?

The way I see it Harding, who held office from March 4, 1921 to August 2, 1923, actually had a pretty enviable record. In that brief period of time he

* appointed four justices of the Supreme Court, including former President William Howard Taft as Chief Justice;

* assembled a cabinet composed of some of the most widely respected men of his time including Charles Evans Hughes as Secretary of State, Andrew Mellon at Treasury, and Herbert Hoover as Secretary of Commerce;

* established the Veteran's Bureau, which later became the Department of Veterans' Affairs;

* convened the first modern international disarmament conference, the Washington Naval Conference;

* produced a government so efficient that it created the first budget surplus since the implementation of the federal income tax, and

* pardoned practically everyone that was still in prison as a result of running afoul of Woodrow Wilson's Espionage and Sedition Acts.

As the historians have always reminded us, Harding had his shortcomings. He wasn't all that fond of that notable failed attempt at legislating morality known as Prohibition, even going so far as to keep a ready supply of what was then an illegal substance on hand in the White House to be served during the frequent late night poker games where Harding would entertain members of the press corps. And Harding was definitely not famous for his marital fidelity, but his record in that department wasn't any worse than Franklin Roosevelt's. So why does he get a bad rep in the eyes of the nation?

Personally, I think it is because he represented the antithesis of Woodrow Wilson's liberal internationalism with its unpopular "make the world safe for democracy" self-rationalization and its slavish devotion to the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations. As Ronald Reagan would later prove, you don't score points with the Intellectual Mafia of the Left by refuting its central tenets and leaving socialism in the dustbin of history.

Maybe someday history, or at least a few historians, will paint George Walker Bush with the same brush that was used to tar and feather the record of Warren Gamaliel Harding following his death. That's why they're historians, to write a record of real events that they can then interpret in a manner that is most consistent with what others want to hear. But, if I were Bush the Younger, I could certainly think of worse company in which my name could be mentioned.