AHC: President Harding is viewed better.

In OTL, President Warren G. Harding is usually regarded as the worst president of all time.
The Challenge is therefore this: With a POD between 1908 and his OTL death, have President Warren Harding be viewed better in the eyes of the public.
 

Stolengood

Banned
Um... could one push back his death? Make him live longer, long enough to try to seek, I don't know, "redemption" of some sort?

Alternatively, I believe TR considered him a good VP-contender if he were to run in 1916 or 1920; that could get him better remembered if Roosevelt dies around the same time or later, in office...
 

DTanza

Banned
What did Harding actually do that was "bad"? As I understand he was basically a ribbon-cutter with the party running everything for him. Not a good or even decent President, but not terrible. Just incredibly useless.
 
What did Harding actually do that was "bad"? As I understand he was basically a ribbon-cutter with the party running everything for him. Not a good or even decent President, but not terrible. Just incredibly useless.

The Teapot Dome Scandal and his illegitimate child come readily to mind.
 
His actual policies don't seem warrant the hate. He did pardon war protesters after WWI, oversaw an economic recovery from 12% unemployment, and he oversaw a balanced budget after WWI ran up the debt. Maybe he wasn't the best, but his resume certainly doesn't warrant being anywhere near the worst. I think that if people look past the scandals he wasn't too bad.
 
His actual policies don't seem warrant the hate. He did pardon war protesters after WWI, oversaw an economic recovery from 12% unemployment, and he oversaw a balanced budget after WWI ran up the debt. Maybe he wasn't the best, but his resume certainly doesn't warrant being anywhere near the worst. I think that if people look past the scandals he wasn't too bad.

I mean, take a look at the scandals of Watergate, Iran-Contra, and Monicagate. Nixon, Reagon, and Clinton all have pretty decent rankings.
 
IMO, all Harding has to do is live and get re-elected in 1924, and the far right will give him the OTL Coolidge treatment. If I remember correctly, none of the scandals seemed likely to immediately end his presidency.
 
Alternatively, I believe TR considered him a good VP-contender if he were to run in 1916 or 1920; that could get him better remembered if Roosevelt dies around the same time or later, in office...

You just put someone who intervened in a coal strike in favor of the workers with someone who in OTL will intervene in a coal strike in favor of the managers.
 
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.
 
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