Centennial Archives - chimesfreedom

Harding Love Letters On June 12, 1920, Republicans at their National Convention in Chicago nominated Warren Gamaliel Harding for president. Harding’s career continues to divide commentators, with much of the debate on whether he was a horrible president or a president who did some okay things. In addition to those debates about Harding’s career, recent stories about Harding have focused on scandals from his personal life.

A Compromise Candidate at the Convention

Before the convention in 1920, Ohio Senator Harding earlier had been a favorite for the nomination. But by the time the convention started, there were a number of other strong candidates.

Through eight ballots, other candidates received more votes than Harding. Finally, Harding took the lead in the ninth ballot as a compromise between divided voters. Then, the man who was born in Blooming Grove, Ohio on November 2, 1865 won the nomination on the tenth ballot.

A Landside Win

In the fall, Harding and his vice-president candidate Calvin Coolidge won in a landslide, stressing a campaign promise of a return to normalcy. Harding defeated the Democrat ticket of James M. Cox, who like Harding was from Ohio.

Cox was the only person of the 1920 major presidential and vice-presidential candidates who would never sit in the White House. Cox’s vice-presidential candidate, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who would be diagnosed with polio less than a year after the election, became president for more than a decade starting in 1933.

Harding’s tenure in the White House was much shorter than Roosevelt’s. In a little more than two years after Harding took office on March 4, 1921, he became ill. And he died from a cerebral hemorrhage on August 2, 1923. Coolidge then became president.

One of the Worst Presidents of All Time?

Despite his short term in office, Harding is largely regarded as one of the worst presidents of all time. For example, U.S. News & World Report has him as the second-worst president of all time.

A wide spectrum of experts and writers are critical of Harding, who was born on November 2, 1865. A recent poll of scholars ranked the twenty-ninth president among the worst presidents.

I remember one of my favorite miniseries from the 1970s, Centennial, about the settling of Colorado, invoked Harding’s name in a non-flattering way. In the final episode, Paul Garrett (David Janssen) referred to Warren G. Harding as one of the “most useful Americans who ever lived.” Garrett explains that Harding created a benchmark for how bad politicians could be. Thus, whenever a politician takes office, they should think of Harding and say, “I will never allow myself to be that bad.”

Harding’s bad reputation largely centers on his lack of leadership while appointing friends who used their offices for financial gain. The most famous example is the Teapot Dome scandal that occurred under his presidency.

Reassessing Harding’s Presidency

Not everybody hates Harding, though. The Warren Harding Home and Museum in Marion, Ohio shows visitors a video that focuses more on the positive aspects of Harding’s life and career.

Similarly, some recently have argued that we should reassess Warren G. Harding’s presidency as pretty good. They claim he stabilized the country, and they argue that his legacy should not be destroyed by scandals where he had no direct involvement. Yet, most still assert that Harding was under-qualified and his actions and in-actions created problems and allowed for the corruption.

Personal Scandals

Beyond the political scandals, there is another side of Harding involving personal scandals. It is these scandals that have garnered Harding more attention in recent years.

Historians have long known Harding was a womanizer, but in 2014 the Library of Congress unsealed some of Harding’s letters that showed a little more of Harding’s personality. The letters, written before and during his tenure as a U.S. senator, were to his lover Carrie Fulton Phillips, who was the wife of a Marion, Ohio, store owner.

In the following segment, John Oliver from Last Week Tonight, gives a brief recap of some of the juicy parts, including Harding’s preference for referring to a certain part of his anatomy as “Jerry.”

Harding was married for 33 years until his death in 1923, but Phillips was not Harding’s only other lover. In 2015, DNA testing confirmed that Harding had fathered a child with Nan Britton during the same period in which he was writing the love letters to Phillips.

Why do we care about Harding’s love life? One may make the case that we should not dig around the private lives of politicians. But when it comes to history, perhaps understanding a little more about Harding may help us understand him as a flawed human being instead of just a ranking on worst presidents lists.

Photo via Library of Congress. Who do you think was the worst president of all time? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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A Story of the Land and the People: Centennial Miniseries

(Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)

This week, Alex Karras, a defensive tackle for the Detroit Lions passed away. Many will remember him for his excellent play on the field or his nights in the Monday Night Football booth. Or maybe they will remember him as Mongo in Blazing Saddles (1974) or as George Papadapolison the TV series Webster (1983-1987). But to me he will always be Hans Brumbaugh, the immigrant who started out as a gold miner and ended up as a Colorado farmer in the miniseries Centennial.

I have already written about one of my favorite TV miniseries, Lonesome Dove, but another one of my all-time favorites is the 1978 12-part Centennial, which originally ran on TV in two and three hour segments over a four-month period. The show dramatized the settling of the West over centuries by focusing on one town in Colorado. Like many of the 1970s miniseries, the show was a who’s who of TV stars and others, including: Chief Dan George, Robert Conrad, Richard Chamberlain, Lynn Redgrave, Sharon Gless, Timothy Dalton, Barbara Carrera, Robert Vaughn, Brian Keith, Raymond Burr, Richard Crenna, David Janssen, Donald Pleasence, Dennis Weaver and Alex Karras. Another two of the stars, Andy Griffith and Chad Everett, also recently passed away. Rotten Tomatoes reports that at the time, Centennial was the most-expensive, the longest, and most complicated miniseries up to that time, with four directors and more than 100 speaking parts.

When the miniseries first ran, I rushed out and bought the very long book by James Michener, who wrote many other novels adapted for film or TV like South Pacific (1958) and Hawaii (1966). Like many of Michener’s other books, Centennial tells the story of an area in Colorado beginning with the land and following animals and generations of people through centuries. In the TV version, the land formation information is condensed down to a few minutes in the opening clip below and we begin following the people on the land. But even the mentions of the animals and the land foreshadow how they will affect the humans on the land in later episodes. The story really begins when the narration drops off and Robert Conrad appears as a trapper around the 6:30 mark.

While the miniseries and novel are not about real people, many of the characters are based upon real people and many of the events reflect real events. One of the things that makes the series work so well is that Michener and the producers convey real history while also telling compelling stories about people using fiction’s freedoms. Among other things, Michener’s practice of doing extensive research results in a tale that incorporates many people often underrepresented in Westerns. The series’s portrayal of strong pioneer women and the struggles they faced, as well as its portrayal of the tragedies heaped upon the Native Americans will likely go beyond what you might expect from a 1970s TV miniseries.

It is hard to tell a compelling story when a large time period and generations are covered, but the miniseries keeps the focus on several characters from youth to old age. Some of the episodes, such as one about a cattle drive, seems to digress to a new group of characters, but eventually you see the connections. If there is a weakness in the series, it is when it finally jumps ahead to modern times in the final episode and tries to tie all of the history together through a local election. While the final episode does not quite live up to what it should be for such an outstanding miniseries and it does not give the payoff you should get from a 26-1/2-hour series, it does not diminish the enjoyment of the rest of the show. I like what the writers tried to do with the final episode, even if it does not live up to the rest of the series, and the final show goes out on a high note with a touching performance by Merle Haggard. (Spoiler Warning: This segment shows the ending of the series, but it does not really ruin much.)

Conclusion: If you like tales of the American West and do not mind history mixed with fiction if it tells a good story with interesting characters, then check out Centennial, an excellent Western and human saga in the form of a mini-series. The series is available on DVD.

What do you think of Centennial? Leave your two cents in the comments.