AH.com Challenge: Make Warren G. Harding a Contender for Greatest US President

Harding often ranks as one of the worst presidents in US history. Your challenge today is to make him a contender for the greatest. Not just plain great, I mean "challenging Washington, Lincoln, and FDR in the polls" great. Incidentally, those were the three presidents ranked highest.

Bonus points if, in addition to making him a truly great president (these were often disliked during their actual term), you make Harding a very popularly great president.
 
Consider what makes presidents great, he goes to war, he expand the goverment and he makes great speaches. I was toying with the idea of blowing up the Senate and Congress in a great Reichtag fire analoge and making himself god-emperor but it struck me, it was a real war going on out there. He get involved in the Russian civil war.
 
The likeliest the US would have gotten re-involved in the Russian civil war was in 1919, two years before Harding entered office. It was gradually winding down as he became president, and in any event the man seems hard pressed to do anything beyond sitting in a chair and misquoting statements for the press.
 
The point is that he gets the US involved in a war. A war going on at the moment is more likely, I toyed with hime making an early Reichtag fire out of Congress and invading a random country but that was a bit to much.

The point is, Harding is a less sexy version of Bill Clinton. They both came to power after a long and costly conflict, neither one did much to end the conflict but benefited by not having it around.
 
There has to be something big, like a war with Britain or Mexico. That is what makes a leader great.
 
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