The Warren Harding Error:
Why We Fall For Tall, Dark, and Handsome Men
Early one morning in 1899, in the back garden of the Globe
Hotel in Richwood, Ohio, two men met while having their
shoes shined. One was a lawyer and lobbyist from the state
capital of Columbus. His name was Harry Daugherty. He
was a thick-set, red-faced man with straight black hair, and
he was brilliant. He was the Machiavelli of Ohio politics, the
classic behind-the-scenes fixer, a shrewd and insightful
judge of character or, at least, political opportunity. The
second man was a newspaper editor from the small town of
Marion, Ohio, who was at that moment a week away from
winning election to the Ohio state senate. His name was
Warren Harding. Daugherty looked over at Harding and was
instantly overwhelmed by what he saw. As the journalist
Mark Sullivan wrote, of that moment in the garden:
Harding was worth looking at. He was at the time about
35 years old. His head, features, shoulders and torso had
a size that attracted attention; their proportions to each other
made an effect which in any male at any place would justify
more than the term handsome - in later years when he came
to be known beyond the local world, the word "Roman" was
occasionally used in description of him. As he stepped down
from the stand, his legs bore out the striking and agreeable
proportions of his body; and his lightness on his feet, his erectness,
his easy bearing, added to the impression of physical grace and
virility. His suppleness combined with his bigness of frame, and
his large, wide-set, rather glowing, eyes, heavy black hair and
rather markedly bronzed complexions gave him some of the
handsomeness of an Indian. His courtesy as he surrendered his
seat to the other customer suggested genuine friendliness toward
all mankind. His voice was noticeably resonant, masculine, warm.
His pleasure in the attention of the bootblack's whisk reflected a
consciousness about clothes unusual in a small-town man. His
manner as he bestowed a tip suggested generous good-nature,
a wish to give pleasure, based on physical well-being and sincere
kindliness of heart.
In that instant, as Daugherty sized up Harding, an idea came
to him that would alter American history: Wouldn't that man
make a great President?
Warren Harding was not a particularly intelligent man. He
liked to play poker and golf and to drink and, most of all, to
chase women; in fact, his sexual appetites were the stuff of
legend. As he rose from one political office to another, he
never once distinguished himself. He was vague and
ambivalent on matters of policy. His speeches were once
described as "an army of pompous phrases moving
over the landscape in search of an idea." After being
elected to the U.S. Senate in 1914, he was absent for the de-
bates on women's suffrage and Prohibition - two of the
biggest political issues of his time. He advanced steadily
from local Ohio politics only because he was pushed by his
wife, Florence, and stage-managed by the scheming Harry
Daugherty and because, as he grew older, he grew more
and more irresistibly distinguished-looking. Once, at a
banquet, a supporter cried out, "Why, the son of a bitch
looks like a senator," and so he did. By early middle age,
Harding's biographer Francis Russell writes, his "lusty
black eyebrows contrasted with his steel-gray hair to give
the effect of force, his massive shoulders and bronzed com-
plexion gave the effect of health." Harding, according to
Russell, could have put on a toga and stepped onstage in a
production of Julius Caesar. Daugherty arranged for Hard-
ing to address the 1916 Republican presidential convention
because he knew that people only had to see Harding and
hear that magnificent rumbling voice to be convinced of
his worthiness for higher office. In 1920, Daugherty
convinced Harding, against Harding's better judgment, to
run for the White House. Daugherty wasn't being facetious.
He was serious.
"Daugherty, ever since the two had met, had carried in
the back of his mind the idea that Harding would make a
`great President,' Sullivan writes. "Sometimes, uncon-
sciously, Daugherty expressed it, with more fidelity to
exactness, `a great-looking President." Harding entered the
Republican convention that summer sixth among a field of
six. Daugherty was unconcerned. The convention was
deadlocked between the two leading candidates, so,
Daugherty predicted, the delegates would be forced to
look for an alternative. To whom else would they turn, in
that desperate moment, if not to the man who radiated
common sense and dignity and all that was presidential?
In the early morning hours, as they gathered in the smoke-
filled back rooms of the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago, the
Republican Party bosses threw up their hands and asked,
wasn't there a candidate they could all agree on? And one
name came immediately to mind: Harding! Didn't he look
just like a presidential candidate? So Senator Harding be-
came candidate Harding, and later that fall, after a cam-
paign conducted from his front porch in Marion, Ohio,
candidate Harding became President Harding. Harding
served two years before dying unexpectedly of a stroke.
He was, most historians agree, one of the worst presidents
in American history.
