OBAMA and HARDING: Corruption and the Moral Authority

When conversations, albeit debates arise about American Presidents, it is not often that Warren Harding is mentioned in the same breath as Barack Obama. Just the idea of such a dialogue could cause convulsions on the part of some on the Left. On one hand you have Harding, the Republican from the 1920s, who never really desired to be president, and Obama the 21st century Democrat, who revels in the accumulation of power. Today, many still believe he has a disproportionate influence on the day to day operations of the DNC. These two men, separated by nearly 90 years and 2 different centuries have a common characteristic centered around a source of controversy pertaining to members of their respective administrations. In 1920, Warren Harding was elected president under the banner,” A Return to Normalcy.” At the time, the US election dealt with the problems of transitioning from a wartime to a peacetime economy but the election was also a referendum on the progressive experimentation of President Woodrow Wilson. Parts of Harding's cabinet were filled with A-list members, Charles Evans Hughes, the former presidential candidate and future Supreme Court Justice at State, Herbert Hoover, the great humanitarian from WWI manning Commerce, and the great financier Andrew Mellon as the new Secretary of the Treasury. But Harding also brought along a number of hucksters, his friends from the heartland known throughout historical narratives as the “Ohio Gang.” These men who Harding professed “would keep him up at night pacing the floors” would engage in graft and turmoil which would not only shatter a Presidency but also contribute to Harding’s physical demise. Their names echo the pages of American History books. Charles Forbes, the chief of the Veterans Administration stole millions of dollars from the agency’s coffers. And the infamous Albert Fall, the Secretary of the Interior who became known for the Teapot Dome Scandal, the leasing of the US Navy’s oil reserves for profit. During Harding’s brief administration, whispers of corruption from the media grew louder causing Harding to go on a speaking tour in 1923 to meet the American people and defend his administration. While in San Francisco, Harding suffered a stroke and died. Revelations of corruption gradually became public causing Harding’s reputation to fall and his name to be forever tarnished. Henceforth, Harding has been ridiculed by historians for his incompetence and corrupt administration despite laying the groundwork for an economic recovery in the 1920s.

But events and narratives have a strange way of overlapping and as we moved forward into the 21st century, a great historical event manifested itself with the election of the first African American Chief Executive Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States. MLK had predicted in1968 that it would take 20 years to elect a Black president. Well he was off by 20 years. But with victories in the elections of 2008 and 2012, Barack Obama as politician, policymaker and diplomat would have a rendezvous with history as many contemporary historians ranked him as a top tier President, especially one who spoke and acted with great moral authority. Ironically, Obama like Harding, would appoint and select individuals for office who were engaged in unscrupulous activities. Hillary Clinton who had been constantly lauded as a President in waiting was appointed Secretary of State. While in office her Foundation (Clinton Global Initiative) was the recipient of millions of dollars of donations, often by foreign donors. Oddly enough, once the Clinton family found themselves outside the levers of power, donations to this Foundation dropped precipitously. No explanation was given and the mainstream press was nowhere to be found to analyze this anomaly. But if investigators want to pose further questions about impropriety in the Obama Administration, Hillary was not alone. What about the number 2 man on the presidential ticket? The ongoing inquiry of then Vice President Joe Biden has found the family on the receiving end of possibly tens of millions of dollars even though his family, brother or son performed no discernible service, provided no tangible product or even was in the possession of a website which could explain what kind of service the family could provide. All of this occurred under the leadership of Barack Obama which is quite odd because he has been given high marks for being a strong moral authority. We don’t have any recollections on Obama’s part of mimicking Harding by “pacing the floors at night” worrying about the personnel of his administration. On the contrary, we have a former chief executive boasting about the transparency of his administration while two high profile members were engaged in very suspicious activity. But this is not all, we have not even covered the IRS scandal or fast and furious which also occurred under his watch. Possibly, Obama was slightly inaccurate when he stated that there was not even a “smidgen of corruption” (IRS scandal)under his rule. Unlike Harding, Obama has escaped the judgment of history with a lapdog press which has abandoned its duties and responsibilities. To have truly achieved the grandeur he received from the adoring press and to fulfill his duty to the American people, maybe Obama should have spent more time pacing the floors at night worrying about the personnel in his administration.