David’s opinion on the presidency of Warren G.
HardingWhen most people probably think about the 29th president they might say, “Who the hell is that?” but you as my second period history teacher would know right off the bat who he is (or I think so). In some opinions as from American historians he is viewed as “The worst in the nations ever experienced, worse than that of Ulysses Grant, worse than even than of the president that was forced to resign, Richard Nixon ”(Murray, 389)!What can you say about Scandals; go ahead say it give it a try (skandal) see how the words are summoned out of your throat and out through your lips (Patrick, brain). Well you might ask yourself why is he asking me to do this? Well then I say to you that scandal is nothing more then something, which brings disgrace when, exposed to the public. To you that know Warren G. Harding then you’ll know why I asked you of this action. Because while he served in presidency to the United States of America there were a lot of things that were scandalized and criticized while in office, but the biggest was the criteria of his not so wisely picked staff or in official terms his cabinet.
In U. S. history, oil reserve scandal began during the administration of President Harding. In 1921, by executive order of the President, control of naval oil reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyo. , and at Elk Hills, Calif. was transferred from the Navy Dept.
to the Dept. of the Interior (Murray, )*. Wow was it a wonder did he actually know what he was doing or was it just stupidity? President Wilson had set the oil reserves aside for the navy. In 1922, Albert B. Fall, U. S.
Secretary of the Interior, leased, without competitive bidding, the Teapot Dome fields to Harry F. Sinclair, an oil operator, and the field at Elk Hills, Calif. , to Edward L. Doheny. These transactions became (1922–23) the subject of a Senate investigation conducted by Sen.
Thomas J. Walsh. It was found that in 1921, Doheny had lent Fall $100,000, interest-free, and that upon Fall’s retirement as Secretary of the Interior (Mar. 1923) Sinclair also “loaned” him a large amount of money. The investigation led to criminal prosecutions. Fall was indicted for conspiracy and for accepting bribes.
Convicted of the latter charge, he was sentenced to a year in prison and fined $100,000. In another trial for bribery Doheny and Sinclair were acquitted, although Sinclair was subsequently sentenced to prison for contempt of the Senate and for employing detectives to shadow members of the jury in his case. The oil fields were restored to the U. S. government through a Supreme Court decision in 1927(Bates, 1). So could this well be the one factor connecting the scandals and him? In this relationship we have him giving the navy’s oil to a known thief.
As an answer to the question I have just posed. I would have to say, “no is the answer”, quite frankly the only way he was connected to this scandal is that he was the president and they (The members that were in the cabinet that wronged the country) were his cabinet. But before all this talk about scandal and him being the worst president lets roll down a street call to Memory Lane: His Childhood. Down this lane you look out the window and you see a kid nick-named ‘Winnie’ mostly not doing his schoolwork thinking about the school paper the Iberian Spectator, seeing how he was the editor of it. A little ways down the road you look and see him selling Insurance but getting tiered of it only after a yeah. Later on he bought a decrepit five-column four-page newspaper called Marion Star.
The paper quickly took to expansion, soon after while his successful newspaper was still doing well he married a woman with one eleven-yeah-old child. The woman’s name was Florence Kling DeWolfe (Murray, 390). All in all Warren G. Harding was not the greatest president there was or ever going to be. Also with a speech as this one “I cannot hope to be one of the great presidents, but
