President Harding Revisited ( Updated 13 October)

With the Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist and the Leader of the House, Tom DeLay both under investigation for impropriety, coupled with the resignation and subsequent arrest of the director Bush put in charge of government procurement, the Bush Administration is looking more like a vintage reincarnation of Warren Harding’s Administration than I suspected. History, some wag once said, is the yardstick we have to measure the influence the past has on the present. And though I think one must be very cautious in attempting to see historical patterns from the past in the present, I do think there are some patterns from the Harding years that fit current circumstances with little, if any, distortion and may help illuminate the path we seem to be taking toward the cliff.

I’m of course aided by a number of standard history texts, most notably John M. Blum et. al.’s National Experience, 4th edition; John M. Blum wrote the material consulted. In sketching the backdrop Blum writes, “Warren Harding brought to government the qualities of his own weak person. . . .he was an ignorant, naive, confused man whose loose standards made him particularly vulnerable to his intellectual deficiencies and to the corrupt character of the hail-fellows with whom he instinctively surrounded himself.” Now, it is hardly a stretch to see “W” in Blum's character sketch. Remember, during the first campaign, the stories about Bush’s directionless life, the booze and drug parties, the DWI charges, all of which Bush refused to talk about; the failed business ventures that Daddy or one of Daddy's friends bailed him out of; the AWOL Air Force fighter pilot who didn’t report for duty? Who couldn’t name a friend who’d served with him in the Alabama guard unit he claimed to have served in? There was no John Kerry like band of combat brothers following “W” around on the campaign trail. No! Not one! He couldn’t even name one.

But back to Bush’s historical mentor, Warren Harding. Harding’s appointees, the Secretary of the Interior, the Attorney General, just to name a couple, were falling like flies, some ending up in jail. The stress and the strain were clearly wearing on the President. Blum writes that “. . .The President unburdened himself to William Allen White: “My God, this is a hell of a job. I have no trouble with my enemies. . . .But my damned friends, my god-damned friends. . . .they’re the ones that keep me walking the floor nights!” Now at this point I must confess the comparison between the Bush and Harding Administration may be invidious, I don’t think Bush feels the moral pressure; he’s not, I think, walking the floor at night.

Blum’s narrative contains a few more gems. For example he writes, “Vulgarity and scandal were the sordid fruits . . .of a government that sought all the advantages of power but none of the responsibilities of organized self-interest that sought special favors in bonuses, bounties, lower taxes, and higher tariffs. Pressure groups had gained advantages for big business. . .those interests dominated the federal government as they had not since the 1890s.” To be sure, one doesn’t have to distort the historical pattern to see it in the current administrations machinations.

Let me conclude with Harding’s self-description from William Allen White’s, Masks in a Pageant, 1928:
“I can’t make a damn thing out of this tax problem. I listen to one side and they seem right, and then- -God!–I talk to the other side and they seem just as right. . . .I know somewhere there is a book that will give me the truth, but, hell, I couldn’t read the book. I know somewhere there is an economist who knows the truth, but I don’t know where to find him and haven’t the sense to know him and trust him when I find him. God! What a job.”

Again, one has to be careful attempting to see patterns from the past in the present. I don’t think Bush , as I’ve noted, agonizes over these difficulties as Harding obviously did. Beyond those clear differences, Harding did do a few things that revisionist historians are now putting in a far more favorable light. The passage of time does help clear the historical perspective. Harding did stop the wholesale civil rights abuses that characterized the Wilson years, and he did pardon one of my historical heros Eugene V. Debs.

The cupidity, the base self-serving behavior, that one thinks about in connection with the Harding scandals have been visited upon the Bush Administration in spades. The one party government in Washington, protects the modern day scoundrels from the Congressional scrutiny they so richly deserve. Instead what do we get? Pseudo Republican investigators perpetrating an investigative fraud, sham and a hoax all in one package. There was Mike Brown, supposedly fired from his position as director of FEMA testifying as a $150,000.00 a year FEMA consultant before a committee of Republicans who want to sweep this whole mess under the rug before the looming off year Congressional elections. . .just 13 months away. Yes, they fired him and then quietly put him back on the payroll as a $150,000.00 a year advisor. And then there was mild mannered Sen. Frist, telling us that he didn’t sell his family owned corporate stock the day before the price fell to make a profit; he did it to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Yeah, this is the same Senator Frist who said when ask about this specific investment two years ago, “I don’t know what my holding are, they’re all in a blind trust.” The day that trust lost its blinders and Frist started managing it is the day when the conflict of interest became more real than apparent.

NOTE: from the Washington Post, 13 October, page 1

"Frist held a substantial amount of his family's hospital stock outside of blind trusts between 1998 and 2002 -- a time when he asserted he did not know how much of the stock he owned.

The Associated Press reported on Tuesday that Frist earned tens of thousands of dollars from HCA stock in a partnership controlled by his brother, outside of the blind trusts he created to avoid a conflict of interest.

"It seems that for years, Frist may have misled his constituents and the American people about his health care industry stock holdings and the conflict of interest they created as he drafted our nation's health care policy," said Democratic National Committee Communications Director Karen Finney. "This deal raises even more questions about the Republican culture of corruption in Washington, D.C."

During his decade in the Senate, Frist has been active in shaping health care policy, including creation of a Medicare prescription drug benefit."



The Harding Scandals are with us again.

Ever on the Watch for ya,

Davy Crockett