HARDING, 29th, 1921-23

Warren Gamaliel Harding looked like a President. He was superbly handsome, big-framed, with large wide-set eyes and he had a pleasant resonant voice. Behind the statesman-like exterior was a man who remained forever insecure about his ability to lead.

His wife, Florence, was the first First Lady to vote for her husband. Malcolm Gladwell coined the phrase "The Warren Harding Error" to describe what happens when our first impressions are so powerful that they cloud our better judgment. Florence worried incessantly about Harding¹s grasp of events and had the Cabinet report to her.

When Republican leaders called on Harding to deny his 'Negro' history, he said, "How should I know whether or not one of my ancestors might have jumped the fence."

He was a highly skilled hand shaker who genuinely loved people.

Knowing that his political and home lives would be ruined by revelations he adulterously fathered a child, Harding tried to convince Nan Britton to terminate the pregnancy. He first offered her a bottle of medication (Dr. Humphrey's No. 11 tablets) that his wife took. Obliquely, he suggested to her that if he had to choose between medicine and an operation he personally would prefer 'the knife.' Britton declined, and on October 22, 1919 delivered the girl who had been conceived in the Senate Office Building. Through the pregnancy, and afterwards, Harding never abandoned Britton.

Nan Britton wrote in her memoir, "I shall never, never forget how Mr. Harding kept saying, after each kiss, God! ... God, Nan!, in high diminuendo, nor how he pleaded in tense voice, Oh, dearie, tell me it isn't hateful to you to have me kiss you! ... Then he would say, Remember, dearie, no recriminations!"

H.L. Mencken wrote about Harding's English, or 'Gamalielese,' as he called it: "It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it."

Harding was the first President to speak over the radio.

Harding used tobacco in all forms. He had two cigars a day, interspersed with a pipe and an occasional cigarette. He also chewed tobacco. To a White House visitor he admitted, "I knew that this job would be too much for me."

In 1923 Harding was a sick man. He had stomach troubles, lung troubles, heart troubles, and friend troubles. He died because it was the best thing to do. He was mourned first and then disgraced.

Harding actually did more than any other President to preserve the Constitution of the United States. He removed that great document from the files of the State Department, where it was rotting, and put it in a protective glass case.

d. August 2, 1923 (San Francisco, California) at 57 of sudden death.