Although it’s easy to point fingers at our current “Big Guy,” the question still remains: Was Warren G. Harding our worst president? Was he a man chosen in a “smoke-filled room” to act as “lookout” for a handful of silk-suited felons trading government contracts for kickbacks? Or was he an inherently principled man too loyal to the Teapot Dome masterminds who swept him into office? Could he have been just oblivious, as many historians now believe? This document gives us a few clues.
Harding was rifling through his desk in the Oval Office one day looking for gum and came upon some papers belonging to that “no-fun brainiac” former President Woodrow Wilson. It’s a “Proust Questionnaire,” a list of subjective questions formulated by the famed French author intended to help reveal to people their true selves and inner personalities.
WHAT IS YOUR GREATEST FEAR?
That someone’s gonna get wise to this Teapot Dome thingamabob.
WHAT IS YOUR CURRENT STATE OF MIND?
I’m worrying about the Teapot Dome thingamabob.
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE WAY OF SPENDING TIME?
Worrying about the Teapot Dome thingamabob.
WHAT HISTORICAL FIGURE DO YOU MOST IDENTIFY WITH?
I guess that would be me.
WHICH LIVING PERSON DO YOU MOST ADMIRE?
Tom Mix, the cowboy star.
WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE FICTIONAL HERO?
The guy Tom Mix plays named “Tom Mix”
WHO ARE YOUR REAL-LIFE HEROES?
Tom Mix.
WHAT IS YOUR MOST TREASURED POSSESSION?
A Tom Mix autographed photo.
WHEN AND WHERE WERE YOU HAPPIEST?
When I appointed Tom Mix’s horse, Tony, to Secretary of the Interior. (It was awfully nice of him to give me that picture. It’s not a kickback if the horse doesn’t draw a salary, right?)
WHAT IS YOUR MOST OBVIOUS CHARACTERISTIC?
My trusting nature.
WHAT IS THE TRAIT YOU MOST DEPLORE IN YOURSELF?
My trusting nature. “Who’s gonna notice a few missing thousand acre oil fields, Warren?” My ass!
WHAT IS THE TRAIT YOU MOST DEPLORE IN OTHERS?
The trait that gets their friends involved in things with the word “Dome” and “Teapot” in their names.
WHAT IS YOUR GREATEST EXTRAVAGANCE?
I like a good cigar! Fifty cents a pop. What do I need with any kickback to hand over the Teapot Dome Naval oil dreserve drilling rights to private interests?
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE JOURNEY?
Any that doesn’t wind me up in jail.
WHAT DO YOU MOST DISLIKE ABOUT YOUR APPEARANCE?
My bottom is big. Must be from all the kicking it’s been getting around this office!
ON WHAT OCCASION DO YOU LIE?
Told Tom Mix I would appoint his other horse “Old Blue,” to the Commerce Committee. Had to get him out of the office somehow!
WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER THE MOST OVER-RATED VIRTUE?
Being honest to cowboy stars.
WHICH WORDS OR PHRASES DO YOU MOST OVER-USE?
“Whatever, I’ll sign it.”
WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER YOUR GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT?
Well, I won with over 60 percent of the vote, pardoned Eugene V. Debs as a way of ending the oppressive and unfair “red Scare,” I lowered taxes and balanced the budget, I was the first president since Lincoln to make equality of the races an issue in his campaign, and reversed no-fun brainiac Wilson’s ban on African-Americans in federal jobs. I even demanded in my first speech to Congress that they “wipe out the barbaric stain of lynching!” I’m sure one day those are the things people will mention when they mention the name “Warren G. Harding.” Teapot Dome my ass!
IF YOU WERE TO DIE AND COME BACK AS A PERSON OR AN ANIMAL, WHAT DO YOU THINK IT WOULD BE?
Secretary of the Interior Tony! Although I would be a bit quicker getting those reports across my desk! And I wouldn’t poop so much in the Blue Room.
HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO DIE?
I don’t know, coronary thrombosis. Maybe in San Francisco?
Fanny Roborat
12 comments
Norbizness
March 8, 2004 at 12:42 pm
1Q: Are there any subjects that should be off-limits in the questionnaire?
A: Sex with a mistress 30 years my junior in a White House closet. And Teapot Dome.
todd levin
March 8, 2004 at 3:16 pm
2Well played, Norbizness. HUZZAH!
(that’s the kind of thing you’re supposed to write in the comments section, right?)
Anonymous
March 8, 2004 at 4:07 pm
3Warren Gamaliel Harding
George Walker Bush
W. G. Harding
G. W. Bush
W. G.
G. W.
Hmmmm.
Mary
March 8, 2004 at 4:51 pm
4Shrub couldn’t even appoint a *whole* horse as Secretary of the Interior. Harding is looking better and better.
Linkmeister
March 9, 2004 at 2:06 am
5Um, was this test in the appendices of Remembrances? ‘Cause I didn’t read that part.
Jerry
March 9, 2004 at 2:18 am
6Great, Mary!
Didn’t know that much about Harding, but assuming all that under “GREATEST ACHIEVEMENTS” is accurate, doesn’t it make you think of Nixon? He could have gone down as one of the greats (rapproachment with China, getting out, albeit it awfully belatedly, of Vietnam, etc) but he was fatally flawed, a tool of big business interests and his own necktie-strangled paranoia and mean-spiritedness.
I don’t see parallels with Shrub. He’s just a spoiled, stupid, drunk, cowardly tool of big business interests with no outstanding accomplishments which future generations can mourn his throwing away.
Norbizness
March 9, 2004 at 10:27 am
7For Jerry’s last paragraph…
Flanders: “You ugly, hate-filled man!”
Moe: “Hey, hey, I may be ugly and hate-filled but I…. um.. what was the third thing you said?”
Warren G. Harding
March 9, 2004 at 12:50 pm
8Quoting from myself:
“America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise”
Clearly, if I meant ANY of this, (which I did) I was not a man of similar mindset to your current leader.
…unless, of course, “equipoise” means “to talk like a retarded kid pretending to be a cowboy” (I suppose I should have looked it up.)
Murray
March 9, 2004 at 5:58 pm
9We here in the Ruffed Grouse state of PA know better. We are proud to claim the mantle of producing the worst president, (well up till now of course), our own # 15 President Buchanan,..uh that would be James not Pat.
A man of unequalled immobility. Whose mere holding the office insured the civil war.
Harding may have had one of the most corrupt administrations, but the consequences of Buchanan were much worse.
skytwo
March 9, 2004 at 8:57 pm
10Errr… I like them old-time movie cowboys just as much as the next feller, but this here post was a might cerebral for my tastes. Where’s that Felber feller?
pagos
March 10, 2004 at 12:29 am
11I don’t know. . . we’ve had stupid presidents (Grant, Harding) and we’ve had evil presidents (Wilson, Nixon) but have we ever had one that combined the two as well as G W?
Murray
March 10, 2004 at 6:05 pm
12What state would get the shame of producing W?
Texas? or Connecticut?