The 29th president of the United States, Warren G. Harding died 3 years into his term of a heart attack in 1923. He won the 1920 election after WWI promising he would return things to normal. He favored pro business policies, and strict immigration, and after he died many scandals were uncovered that tarnished his reputation. Born in 1865 in Ohio, he graduated a local college in 1882 before he got a job at a newspaper called Marion Star. He was a republican on the Ohio senate for five years starting in 1898. in 1912 he gave a speech at the Republican national convention nominating Taft for reelection. From 1914 until he was elected president in 1920 he was on the US Senate. While on Senate he was generally a pretty quite guy and didn't stand strongly for much, yet he opposed Wilsons plan for the league of nations. He was chosen as the republican nomination for president who would run with Calvin Coolidge, against the democratic nominee James Cox with his running mate Franklin Roosevelt. He gave speeches on his own front lawn in Ohio about his plans to "return the country to normalcy." He won 60% of the popular vote, in the first election to ever include women with the 1920 ratification of the 19th amendment. When he got to the white house he reduced taxes, for corporations and the rich. He kept high protective tariffs, along with strict immigration laws. He was a conservative pro-business republican. The worlds leading countries had a naval disarmament conference held by the US. Harding streamlined the federal budget system with the budget and accounting act of 1921. He also made ex-president Taft the supreme court chief justice. As president he surrounded himself with good and bad people. During his lifetime he had a good not outstanding reputation, however after he died scandals within his administration were uncovered destroying his good name. For example the teapot dome scandal involved Albert Fall, secretary of the interior renting public land to oil companies for gifts. Other of his appointed officials took funds, and embezzled money. Although he himself didn't partake in any major corrupt deals (or no proven ones,) he was thought to be violating the 18th amendment, by drinking in the white house and having extramarital affairs. In 1923 he went on a country tour to promote his policies to the American people, and died of a heart attack in San Francisco.
http://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/warren-g-harding
https://www.whitehouse.gov/1600/presidents/warrenharding
Very short, but gets to many of Harding's main policies and points when he was president. I like how you mention a lot of things he did and some of the things that happened after he died, but I think you could go into further detail about each topic and split it up into separate paragraphs. For example, you could talk more about how Harding was a "conservative, who was determined to make the federal government serve U.S. business interests". Another thing Harding did according to his pro-business plan was that he lowered taxes for the rich. "By 1926, a person earning $1 million annually paid less than a third of the income tax he had paid in 1920".
ReplyDeletesource-http://millercenter.org/president/biography/harding-domestic-affairs
Do you think Harding's message for "normalcy" was the deciding factor in his election? After World War I, America had gotten a taste of what foreign politics was; the problems and horror that war brought revitalized American isolationism. They wanted to return to the time before the war when everything was nice. This is why Harding is such a popular candidate. He offers a return to normalcy. I think the popularity of Harding's message can be demonstrated in the polls; he was able to receive 60% of the votes. This article provides the quote when Harding addresses normalcy:
ReplyDeletehttp://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/return-to-normalcy/
You mentioned that Harding favored strict immigration policies. This is very true, and he actually supported the Johnson Immigrant Quota Act of 1921, which said that the immigration of any given nationality could not exceed 3 percent of the immigrants from that country residing in the US in 1910. This made immigration more difficult, especially for nationalities that did not already have a lot of people in America. This was the first in a series of steps against immigrants that would favor northern and western Europeans. One reason these laws were passed is that Republicans were worried that immigrants from southern and eastern Europe would vote for the Democratic party.
ReplyDeletesource: http://millercenter.org/president/biography/harding-domestic-affairs
I was very intrigued by your summary of Hardings life and his political career. After taking a little to research his I found out something very interesting about him. As president he liked to use his power to put his friends into office. This became widely known after the Teapot Dome Scandal, in which Albert Fall, Harding's Secretary of the Interior, was caught selling the rights to an oil field in Teapot Dome, Wyoming.
ReplyDeletehttp://americanhistory.about.com/od/warrengharding/tp/Ten-Things-To-Know-About-Warren-G-Harding.htm