When Harding died, he was exceedingly popular, and the lamentation for his death and his popularity may be comparable to that for Kennedy and his death or President Roosevelt and his death. The thing was that afterward, all the scandals and corruption came out, and of course you had the Depression hit the country (which the Harding/Coolidge type economy-to-government relationship had allowed). And there's also the fact that what did Harding really do? Besides the corruption and scandal, what really came from his presidency? Any of that is forgettable and forgotten. It's not like Lincoln or Kennedy with what they could have done had they lived given their promise, or Lincoln and Roosevelt with leading the nation to safety through its darkest times and saving it and putting all these grand things into place. Harding suffers from negligible or at least forgettable good, and is potch marked by some of the worst corruption since the Grant administration.