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Jewish World Review Feb. 28, 2001 / 5 Adar 5761
Philip Terzian
He had an imperious, ambitious wife -- called "The Duchess" behind her back -- who prodded
him along in his successful career. He loved to play golf, at which he wasn't very good, and
charm visitors and audiences, at which he was very good indeed. His best friend in Washington
was an equally charming, slightly raffish, millionaire who lived on a big estate at the edge of
town, and whose wife had a fondness for diamonds and intrigue. His dog, a much-publicized dark
collie mix, was nearly as famous to the public as his master.
The president surrounded himself with a curious combination of gray eminences and old
cronies. His secretary of state was a distinguished lawyer-politician; his Treasury secretary
was a successful financier; his secretary of commerce was admired around the world. His
attorney general, however, was a provincial political hack, whose missteps and poor judgment
caused the president much harm.
Having succeeded a commander-in-chief largely occupied with foreign, not domestic, affairs,
the president was elected on the promise to raise government interest in the welfare of its
citizens. He reduced the size of the nation's armed forces, and signaled a gradual withdrawal
from world leadership. Still, he was not without foreign achievements. His inaugural address,
despite its excessive length, eloquently expressed his hope to ease global tensions and advance
the cause of peace. He convened a disarmament conference at which the world's principal naval
powers agreed to limit the construction of new warships. He did much to repair frayed relations
with our Latin American neghbors. The stock market boomed, and the economy yielded explosive
growth and expanding wealth.
The president was famous for his personal magnetism, and empathetic manner; and while
sometimes given credit for the hard work of others, retained the firm loyalty of his party in
Congress. Still, there was a dark side to him as well. Despite a professed devotion to the
simple virtues in life, he enjoyed the company of wealthy men, to whom he granted favors, and
some of whom exerted undue influence on public policy. He was also a famous philanderer: He had
a longtime mistress in his hometown, and a lover in the White House barely out of her teens.
Infatuated with the older man she had admired from afar, she would slip in and out of the oval
office, with the connivance of the president's staff. The president could be, in the words of
one Washington wit, a "slob."
In due course, the bad things crowded out the good. It became evident, after awhile, that
the president's faith in his associates was often misplaced. One was secretly leasing
government reserves to private oilmen for a fee. Another was skimming proceeds from impounded
foreign assets. An official concerned with veterans' affairs was found to have plundered
federal assets, and permits and presidential pardons were sold for cash. A few of the
president's midlevel associates were shipped off to prison. One cabinet member was convicted of
taking bribes, and another was indicted but set free by hung juries. When investigators got too
close to one of the president's oldest hometown friends and associates, he shot himself to
death, sending shock waves through Washington.
I trust it has occurred to readers, at this juncture, that I am not describing William J.
Clinton, but a famous predecessor, Warren G. Harding. There are differences between the two, to
be sure. Harding once described himself as a "man of limited talents from a small town," not
the sort of self-assessment Clinton might offer. But the parallels are instructive. As with
Clinto, Harding's achievements were overstated by his admirers, and with brutal swiftness,
forgotten in the midst of disillusion and scandal.
Another contrast, I fear, is to Clinton's disadvantage. The worst that can be said about
Harding is that he was the passive victim of others' bad conduct, most of which came to light
after his death. No one ever accused Harding of personal dishonesty; he was simply surrounded
by subordinates on the make. With Bill and Hillary Clinton, the opposite is true. The press
tends to suggest that scandal and misconduct happens to the Clintons when, in
fact, it almost invariably originates with them. The extraordinary saga of the
Clinton pardons is just beginning, and squalid details seem to ooze forth every day.
What a contrast with Harding! So troubled was he by Woodrow Wilson's wartime sedition acts
that he freed any number of victims from prison, notably the famous socialist Eugene Debs.
Debs' pardon was scheduled for 1922, but Harding advanced it to the previous December so Debs "could spend Christmas with his
02/26/01: Tax cut? How bourgeois
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