Abstract
Like the “irredeemables” of the nineteenth century, the presidents of the early twentieth century are treated collectively. As Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan are often judged as responsible for the Civil War, Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover together share responsibility for the Great Depression. As Lincoln, a great president, provided the critique of his bad predecessors, so did Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) for his. Franklin D. Roosevelt did not name names in his 1932 Oglethorpe University speech as Lincoln did in his House Divided address, but he unequivocally assigned blame to the Republican triumvirate of the 1920s. It would have been surprising in an election campaign if FDR had not blamed the Depression on Hoover. FDR used Hoover’s own analogy of the Depression as a storm sweeping across American shores from Europe to attack the Hoover administration’s competence: “There are glimpses through the clouds, of troubled officers pacing the deck wondering what to do.” 1
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Notes
Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Address at Columbus Ohio,” in Samuel I. Roseman, ed., Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1928–1932) (New York: Macmillan, 1938), p. 672.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Address at Oglethorpe University,” in Samuel I. Roseman, ed., Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1928–1932) (New York: Macmillan, 1938), pp. 639–40.
William E. Leuchtenburg, The Perils of Prosperity 1914–1932 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 103;
Ronald Allen Goldberg, America in the Twenties (Syracuse, NY: University of Syracuse Press, 2003), p. 61;
Elliot A. Rose, Hoover, Roosevelt, and the Brains Trust (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), p. 53.
Donald McCoy, Calvin Coolidge: The Quiet President (New York: Macmillan, 1957), p. 420.
Herbert Hoover, “Inaugural Address,” in John Gabriel Hunt, ed., The Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents (New York: Gramercy, 1995), p. 364.
Philip G. Payne, Dead Last: The Public Memory of Warren G. Harding’s Scandalous Legacy (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2009), p. 17.
See Richard Lingeman’s cultural history, Small Town America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980).
Sherwood Anderson, Poor White (New York: Modern Library, 1926), p. 36.
Thomas Wolfe, Of Time and the River (New York: Scribner, 1935), p. 898.
Randolph C. Downes, The Rise of Warren Gamaliel Harding (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1970), p. 201.
Speech, Waldorf Astoria, New York, 1920, Harding Papers, Ohio Historical Society.
Andre Sinclair, The Available Man: The Life behind the Masks of Warren Gamaliel Harding (New York: Macmillan, 1965), pp. 136–54.
William Allen White, Masks in a Pageant (New York: Macmillan, 1928), p. 409.
Eugene P. Trani and David L. Wilson, The Presidency of Warren G. Harding (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1977), p. 182.
Carl Sferrazza Anthony, Florence Harding: The First Jazz Age and the Death of America’s Most Scandalous President (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1998), pp. 24–25.
Robert Sobel, Coolidge: An American Enigma (Washington, DC: Regnery, 1998), p. 234.
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© 2013 Philip Abbott
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Abbott, P. (2013). The Booster: Warren G. Harding. In: Bad Presidents. The Evolving American Presidency Series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137306593_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137306593_8
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