2/28/16

#29: Warren G Harding: The nation's most boring presidency

It's been a very long time. I've learned that although going from no kids to 1 kid takes most of your free time going from 1 kid to 2 kids takes the rest.

Anyhow; I'm back at it and intend on plowing through the rest of the 20th century on this presidential biography project over the next year or two. Over the last many months I've been reading the biography on Warren Harding on and off and have finally finished it.

I'm now past the gilded age lull in presidents and will be hitting really interesting stuff soon; we're just at the very infancy of the roaring twenties - Harding served from 1921 to 1923. America is now one of the greater political and economic powers of the world (although much less so than after World War II), we'll be coming up to the stock market crash in a few years, the dust bowl, the great depression, the radical movements of the 1930's and World War II to just name a few things that are around the corner.

For now though, we have Warren G Harding.

I don't know if Harding was boring or if it was just the author that was boring, but this was one of the most unreadable biographies I've read. I think it took me a year to read it and it was quite and exercise in self control to keep picking it back up. He was very popular when he was alive but he was vilified after his death for many minor and some major scandals that his cabinet were involved in.

As a person, I don't think he was thought of as boring; he was considered very good looking for his time, he loved wine women and song, was a scratch golfer and he had a famous long term affair that resulted in a child out of wedlock. It just seemed like he didn't really take any strong stand one way or another on much of anything or at least didn't have time to before he died unexpectedly in office.

I will do my best to keep my blog posts more interesting.