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You are here: Home / Past Elections / Election 2012 / Everything Old Is… Stale & Tired, Again

Everything Old Is… Stale & Tired, Again

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I guess if upcycling and found art are still hip, we can refer to Erick “Voice of the GOP Gated Community” Erickson as a found comedian:

…The fight has gotten so bitter and acrimonious with only three states chosen because neither side thinks the other side can win. Gingrich supporters understand that the secularists in the media — not the Democrats, but the media to the extent it can be separated from the Obama Machine — will spend six months creeping out independent suburban voters about Mormons, holy underwear, Kolob, postmortem baptism, and views on black people and then, as the coup de grace, Barack Obama will fire up millions of dollars of ads on Bain Capital raiding pension funds forcing the government to cover the debt so Mitt Romney could make millions whether he won or lost a deal.
__
Romney supporters understand Newt Gingrich will open his mouth.

In the ensuing scramble to elevate some other Not-Mitt-Not-Newt choice (can Pawlenty re-enter? Is Erickson’s mancrush Perry hopelessly tarnished?) a couple of self-styled historians discuss the last successful GOP candidate to arise from a brokered convention:

Harding was responsible for ending a recession. He cut government by about 1/3 and cut the heck out of Wilson’s income tax rates. So we entered what were called the “Roaring 20′s”. Not a bad candidate. His “cronyism” can be ignored as piking by today’s standards (Solyndra out-does Teapot Dome by several thousand times).

Karl Rove notoriously attempted to model Dubya after William McKinley, so presumably the Harding Administration is a natural model for the Cheney Regency’s intended successor. But sanctifying a man best remembered for getting his mistress pregnant in the Oval Office while his cronies stole everything but the copper out of the walls is going to be, shall we say, challenging for anyone outside the RedState cargo cult. (He does look a bit like Mitch Daniels, though… )

Reader Interactions

78Comments

  2. 2.

    dmsilev

    RedState is positively hilarious to read these days. The despair rolling off of Ericksonsonsonson is wonderful, especially because we all know, and he knows, that if Mittens pulls off the nomination, EE will become an utterly shameless Mitten-fluffer.

  4. 4.

    Suffern ACE

    Ah, the nasty Wilson’s. Paying for that war thing through taxes. Thank god Harding came along and lowered the war taxes after the war was over.

  6. 6.

    DFS

    Hunter Thompson wrote a fine summation of the subject once: “the hapless Warren Harding, who cared about nothing except stud poker, rye whiskey and bimbos.”

  7. 7.

    Mike Goetz

    This is quality stuff too (from the Wall Street Journal):

    “Finally, there are the men not in the field: Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Haley Barbour. This was the GOP A-Team, the guys who should have showed up to the first debate but didn’t because running for president is hard and the spouses were reluctant. Nothing commends them for it. If this election is as important as they all say it is, they had a duty to step up. Abraham Lincoln did not shy from the contest of 1860 because of Mary Todd. If Mr. Obama wins in November—or, rather, when he does—the failure will lie as heavily on their shoulders as it will with the nominee.”

  8. 8.

    Josh G.

    Harding was by no means a brilliant president, but I’m baffled by historical presidential rankings that list him at or near the very bottom. While Harding’s administration was unquestionably corrupt, I don’t think it was really much worse than average by Gilded Age / Roaring Twenties standards. I’d place Hoover, Nixon, and Bush II as far worse 20th century Presidents than Harding by any measure. Harding did a few praiseworthy things: eliminated Wilson’s repressive wartime measures, released Eugene Debs from prison, pushed anti-lynching legislation in the House of Representatives. He ran on a platform of “Return to Normalcy” and that’s more or less what he provided.

    For what it’s worth, I think Woodrow Wilson was the worst President of the 20th century by a wide margin. He actively pushed racist policies at the Federal level, and outlawed virtually all dissent to his policies during the First World War. More than any other president of the century he came close to ruling as a totalitarian dictator. And the long-term effects of his foreign policies were the worst of any president ever: no U.S. intervention into WWI means no Treaty of Versailles, and thus no WWII and no Holocaust. Even today, “Wilsonian interventionism” continues to be used as an excuse every time the U.S. wants to kill people or blow things up overseas.

  10. 10.

    Tom Q

    Even apart from his other absurd a-historical characterizations of Wilson & Harding…does Erickson remember that the Roaring 20s had a rather unhappy ending?

  11. 11.

    MattF

    @Julia Grey: Yeah, funny about how the crazyfuckers go on about Solyndra, but no one pays attention. The WaPo has published article after article, to no avail.

    There is the possibility that most people have figured out that Obama is an honest man. We shall see, I guess.

  12. 12.

    cmorenc

    Harding? Perhaps Erickson is indulging an Andy Kaufman style snark here, right-wing style. Erickson is obnoxious and insane, but surely not so off-the-wall insane as to really believe the savior candidate the GOP needs is a modern version of Warren Harding. If he starts making favorable James Buchanan references, he’s definitely gone political Andy Kafuman on his readers, except he’s wrestling with haplessly oblivious past Presidents instead of lady wrestlers.

  14. 14.

    Tom Q

    @Josh G.: You can make alot of parallels between Wilson and Bush II — elected in flukes; re-elected by the then-smallest margin in US history; flagrant civil rights violations; overseas adventurism and demonization of the policies’ opponents; losers of the House and Senate in the 6th year and the presidency in a terrible economy at the end of eight.

  15. 15.

    EconWatcher

    While I’ve been enjoying sips of schadenfreude, I haven’t really been able to quaff with gusto. I have a nervous eye on Europe.

  17. 17.

    shortstop

    (He does look a bit like Mitch Daniels, though… )

    Funny, the other night we were saying that Daniels looks like a less grim version of Coolidge.

  19. 19.

    flukebucket

    @Mike Goetz:

    It is sobering and hilarious when you realize that the GOP A-team is a just a group of cowards and wimps. None of them ran because they did not want to get their asses handed to them by a black guy. They all remember Baltimore.

  20. 20.

    Ben Cisco

    Sort of related: Reuters blog on a possible destination for ODS patients after an Obama 2012 victory:
    __

    Dementiaville follows a similar nursing home that was established in the Amsterdam suburbs in 2009, where the residents (or their guardians) “pay €5,000 a month to live in a world of carefully staged illusion,” as the U.K. Independent reports today. The visual and architectural cues at Dementiaville will all be from the comforting 1950s, when the residents still had full possession of their minds. The operation’s caretakers “will dress as gardeners, hairdressers and shop assistants,” the paper continues, to extend the illusion. Dementiaville founder Markus Vögtlin claims that the planned environment at the Amsterdam village makes its patients “feel comfortable. I call it travelling back in time.”

    WOW.

  21. 21.

    AA+ Bonds

    Harding was responsible for ending a recession. He cut government by about 1/3 and cut the heck out of Wilson’s income tax rates. So we entered what were called the “Roaring 20′s”.

    How much of a dumbshit do you have to be to write something like this, it’s basically saying “the next Republican president will cause the Great Depression”

  23. 23.

    Ed Drone

    I attended Warren G. Harding Jr. High, in Des Moines. I always wondered why they chose that name, though I suspect it was built and named before much truly horrendous was realized about his reign.

    And Teapot Dome was, in today’s dollars, as costly — and considerably more illegal — than Solyndra.

    Ed

  24. 24.

    cmorenc

    @Josh G.:

    I’d place Hoover, Nixon, and Bush II as far worse 20th century Presidents than Harding by any measure.

    Yes, but Harding was fortunate to come to office in relatively benign domestic times, other than the onset of Prohibition. He had far more limited parameters to really screw things up than did Hoover or Bush II. Nixon’s really much more of a mixed bag, a bad man who indulged many nasty instincts politically, but who had many surprisingly progressive inclinations (especially for a Republican.) Most of the foundation environmental legislation (Clean Water Act, EPA, Clean Air Act) were legacies of his Administration, enacted with its cooperation and approval rather than resistance. That doesn’t quite make up for the long-term damage he did with his “Southern Strategy” or the impact of putting William Rehnquist on the Supreme Court etc. But if given the choice between Nixon vs Bush II in the 2000-2008 period, I’d choose Nixon in a heartbeat. Not that I wouldn’t vastly rather have Gore, but the question at hand is Bush II vs Nixon.

  25. 25.

    Villago Delenda Est

    I revel in the pain of Ewick. It brings me tremendous joy. Schadenfreude meter pegged, again.

    Suffer, you vile little neofeudalist asshole. Suffer!

  26. 26.

    AA+ Bonds

    I UNDERSTAND THERE WERE THESE THINGS CALLED THE ROARING TWENTIES WHEN INCOME INEQUALITY SHOT THROUGH THE ROOF AND I FORGOT WHAT HAPPENED AFTER THAT, YABBA DABBA DOOOOOOOO

  27. 27.

    Roger Moore

    @Josh G.:

    While Harding’s administration was unquestionably corrupt, I don’t think it was really much worse than average by Gilded Age / Roaring Twenties standards.

    So he was the most corrupt president of the most corrupt era in US politics. He also adopted laissez faire economic policies that directly lead to the worst depression of the 20th Century. I’ll accept that Wilson was far worse than his reputation, but Harding deserves his opprobrium.

  29. 29.

    srv

    @Josh G.:

    no U.S. intervention into WWI means no Treaty of Versailles, and thus no WWII and no Holocaust.

    I’m open to what-ifs, but that is a huge stretch. Germany would have still lost, and would have still been rat-fucked. Wilson thought he’d get a seat at the table, he didn’t.

  30. 30.

    Brachiator

    But sanctifying a man best remembered for getting his mistress pregnant in the Oval Office while his cronies stole everything but the copper out of the walls is going to be, shall we say, challenging for anyone outside the RedState cargo cult.

    Did Harding have an open marriage?

  31. 31.

    Josh G.

    Tom Q @ 14: Yes, there are quite a few parallels… on the other hand, can anyone seriously picture Bush II as a college professor?

  32. 32.

    The Moar You Know

    I’d place Hoover, Nixon, and Bush II as far worse 20th century Presidents than Harding by any measure.

    @Josh G.: If your concern is civil rights, I get Nixon and W. But not Hoover.

    If you concern is corruption/influence peddling/theft then Harding’s the flat out worst.

    If pursuing a “stay the course” line of action while driving the ship of state right into an iceberg is a pet peeve of yours, then Hoover’s the worst.

  33. 33.

    kindness

    Talk about challenging, have you been to RedState lately? The comments there are challenging. I see that and I wonder what little Fox Universe they exist in. Somehow I got linked in to a Politico article today and they were the same. FSM! Damn.

    It’s the RedState Trike Force for a reason.

  34. 34.

    geg6

    @DFS:

    Gore Vidal created a wickedly devastating portrait of Harding in “Hollywood.” When Vidal detests someone, no one can snark better. I remember reading that book and just laughing like hell. If you like your historical novels with maximum snark, excellent prose, and more truth than you’ll find in today’s “serious” news media, I cannot recommend Vidal’s Empire series (“Burr,” “Lincoln,” “1876,” “Empire,” “Hollywood,” “Washington, D.C.,” and “The Golden Age”) enough.

  36. 36.

    Tone In DC

    @Mike Goetz:

    OUCH.
    That’s gonna leave a mark. Doc Ron, Mittens, the salamander and Bachmann Crazed Overdrive felt that all the way in Jacksonville.

  38. 38.

    Josh G.

    srv @ 29: Anything’s possible, but without U.S. involvement, the result is almost certainly a stalemate. Most likely it goes on for another few bloody and futile years, and finally ends on terms similar to status quo ante bellum, with the warmongers on both sides discredited.

    U.S. involvement caused the worst possible situation: our industrial base guaranteed the Entente would win, but this win was carried out without any actual occupation of Germany. This made it very unclear to many Germans just what had happened, and created fertile ground for the “Stab in the Back” myth.

  40. 40.

    Michael

    @Julia Grey: I thought the same thing. One involved clearly illegal bribes; the other involved a perfectly legal, if ill-advised, bit of government investment. He just tossed that out the window while dumbing along at 85 mph and it splatted all over the highway.

  41. 41.

    Violet

    For additional entertainment, check out some of the Palin sites. They think a Mitt win in FL will dispatch Newt and pave the way for Palin to jump into the race as a savior candidate. BWAHAHAHAHA!

  42. 42.

    scav

    @Ben Cisco: While those exact implementations may be rather over the top, there is actually some evidence behind the principle that elderly dementia patients do function better when given clues and support from earlier in their lives. Examples. Can’t handle push-button phones but can manage rotary. Find it easier to locate their breakfast cereal when its in a box from decades ago. Makes some sense, as they often can remember stuff from earlier in their lives more than recent stuff, plus it’s actions that have become habitual and may be stored differently. Problem is (from what I read), there’s so much individual variation that they found it hard to set up environments that worked for multiple people.

  43. 43.

    JCT

    @Ed Drone: My High School in Los Angeles was also named Warren G. Harding — until a few years after Teapot Dome and it was renamed University High…

    @Violet: Whoa, that is some powerful hysteria.

    Poor poor Ewick — they tried to game the system and fell under the bus. Tragedy.

  44. 44.

    cmorenc

    @Josh G.:

    For what it’s worth, I think Woodrow Wilson was the worst President of the 20th century by a wide margin…the long-term effects of his foreign policies were the worst of any president ever: no U.S. intervention into WWI means no Treaty of Versailles, and thus no WWII and no Holocaust.

    @srv:

    I’m open to what-ifs, but that is a huge stretch. Germany would have still lost, and would have still been rat-fucked. Wilson thought he’d get a seat at the table, he didn’t.

    There’s no doubt that Great Britain snookered the US into getting involved in a European War in which the US had no real national interest, and would neither have gained or lost anything whether Britain or Germany won that war. I disagree strongly that it was inevitable that Germany would have lost that war anyway, even without US intervention; the only real question is how many years the respective warring parties could have continued tolerating an extended stalemate. There was no effective way back then to really damage Germany’s industrial war capability more than artillery-shell range beyond the front lines; that wouldn’t come for at least another 10-15 years. IMHO an extended war of attrition would have eventually exhausted the European powers into some sort of settlement completely pleasing to no one, but preferable to continuing a mutually unwinnable war. And there would have been no Hitler etc.

  45. 45.

    jl

    ” Harding…. Not a bad candidate. ”

    Um, has anyone broken the sad news to them that Harding passed away some time ago?

    And, just occurred to me, I think it was in San Francisco.

    Hmmm… maybe it was a liberal plot to wreck the 2012 GOP resurgence.

  46. 46.

    The Moar You Know

    I see that and I wonder what little Fox Universe they exist in.

    @kindness: Read more. Fox is off the list, they’re gone “liberal” these days.

    I SHIT YOU NOT. They are saying those exact words.

  47. 47.

    Montysano

    Is Erickson’s mancrush Perry hopelessly tarnished?

    Yes. SATSQ.

    I was gobsmacked from the get-go that GOP insiders didn’t sit Perry down and say “Here’s the thing: you look like George W. Bush. You sound just like him. Ergo, you shall never be elected to national office. So sorry. Please go home now.” But they didn’t, with predictable results.

  48. 48.

    Steve

    @srv: I’m not saying you have to buy that counterfactual about WWI, but no less an authority than Winston Churchill publicly espoused the same theory. Not that I think Wilson was supposed to magically envision the outcome, but whatever.

  49. 49.

    EconWatcher

    @Steve:

    Of course, this is all guesswork, but…

    If the war had continued several more years in a stalemate without the US, there probably still would have been a Bolshevik revolution in Russia; Germany probably still would have ended up in ruins; German Communists would still probably have been in a position to scare the bejesus out of the old burghers with things like the temporary seizure of power in Bavaria; and there still would have been fertile ground for some kind of wildly reactionary movement to restore the country’s honor and rout the commies. In other words, I’m not sure the result would have been any different.

  51. 51.

    Roger Moore

    @cmorenc:

    There was no effective way back then to really damage Germany’s industrial war capability more than artillery-shell range beyond the front lines

    Yes, there was; it was called a naval blockade. Lack of supplies and food from overseas was really starting to hurt Germany by 1917. After pushing Russia out of the war they made a desperate attempt at a war winning offensive on the Western Front, but they failed, and before enough US troops got their to make a critical difference. After that, they had pretty much shot their bolt. They were going to lose whether the US came into the war or not.

  52. 52.

    BarbCat

    The weakness of the GOP field is Obama’s fault.

    That would be true whether they were running Thune, Chrispy, Rubio, Ryan, Bush and so on. They’ve.Got.Nothing. the people want.

  57. 57.

    Tokyokie

    @jl: As I recall, Harding suffered a heart attack while on a yacht for a visit to Alaska. His personal physician (another incompetent crony) attributed his illness to tainted shellfish, but after the boat got back to the mainland (and it probably docked in San Francisco), better qualified doctors concluded he’d had a heart attack, but alas, by then he was dead.

  58. 58.

    Suffern ACE

    @Hunter Gathers: Yeah. I like how he gets credit for the “bold move” of putting out the referendum. Do New York reporters ever venture out of their enclave on the coast?

  59. 59.

    wrb

    @pragmatism:

    i believe that persons of jewish descent are exempt from this. they made a deal.

    maybe, maybe not

    This has, throughout history, not always pleased the relatives of the dead people who were baptized — say for instance, the relatives of Jewish Holocaust victims who found their family members’ names among those who had been posthumously converted to Mormonism. And so hey, know where there are lots of Jewish people these days? Florida. What’s happening in Florida next week? A Republican presidential primary. Who’s leading the polls in that primary right now? A Mormon. Has Mormon Mitt Romney been secretly baptizing Holocaust victims in his spare time?

    When Newsweek magazine asked Romney if he personally had performed posthumous baptisms on anyone, author Jonathan Darman wrote, “he looked slightly startled and answered, ‘I have in my life, but I haven’t recently.’ The awareness of how odd this will sound to many Americans is what makes Romney hesitant to elaborate on the Mormon question.”

  60. 60.

    BDeevDad

    You know what else happened during the Harding administration, that these yahoo Republicans would kick and scream about.

    From 1921 to 1923, the federal government spent a total of $162 million on America’s highway system, infusing the U.S. economy with a large amount of capital

    BTW, that’s about 2.1 Billion in today’s dollars.

  61. 61.

    Brachiator

    @trollhattan:

    Wow. On par with Hilbots hoping for her to primary Obama, and as likely.

    Looks like Obama is going to have job openings at both Treasury and State after he is re-elected:

    Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told State Department employees Thursday that she will not stay on in the job if President Obama wins re-election, saying that after two decades, she is ready to step off “the high wire of American politics.”

    And this just in, stupidity is bad for everyone:

    There’s no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy.
    __
    The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario. Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience.

    I await Andrew Sullivan’s rebuttal.

  62. 62.

    WereBear

    I’ve always thought that the posthumous baptism was one of the weirder things Mormons do; why bother leading a godly Mormon life, then?

  63. 63.

    jl

    @Tokyokie:

    Thanks. That jogged my memory.

    I think I read there were rumors that Mrs. Harding poisoned him.

    Harding was an irresponsible horndog and adulterer in the grand JFK/Clinton style. His wife sometimes issued orders to Harding’s staff on how to keep Harding away from pretty young things during the day, since odds were he would pitch them for a roll in the sack that same night.

  65. 65.

    bemused

    @Hunter Gathers:

    What is wrong with these people?! Christie should know better than to make a statement like that or was he just trying to keep his face in the media.

  67. 67.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @Roger Moore:

    They were going to lose whether the US came into the war or not.

    Germany had lost the war by September 1918. The Hindenburg line had been breached and there was essentially nothing but a broken retreating force between the Allies and Berlin. The Germans sued for peace because a single further Allied offensive would have cracked them like an egg.

  68. 68.

    Michael

    From Erick Son of Erickson’s latest:

    The fix is in for Romney, which just means when he is crushed by Barack Obama a lot of Republicans will have a lot of explaining to do. Newt may not be able to win. But Romney sure as hell can’t beat Obama either if Newt can’t win.

    If self-awareness were food, these guys’d starve to death.

  72. 72.

    Southern Beale

    “….the media to the extent it can be separated from the Obama Machine ..”

    Bwaaahaaahaaaaa…

    LOL LOL LOL

    Sorry I couldn’t get past that one bit ….

  73. 73.

    Chuck Butcher

    It is fun to watch the kind of people the GOP breeds fight amongst themselves. That they all look so bad is an outcome of the disease of GOPerism rather than a condition of those that ran. Their wish list looks just as bad.

  74. 74.

    jefft452

    @Roger Moore:
    Yes
    @Viva BrisVegas:
    And yes
    Also, too, the sailors of the High Seas Fleet were mutinying and the civilian population was sick of starving. It was peace or revolution

    @Steve:
    “…but no less an authority than Winston Churchill publicly espoused the same theory”
    Why do people rely on Churchill for history?
    He was a “historian” the way Gingrich is a “historian”
    A failed politician with an ideological ax to grind and a strong motivation to misdirect attention from his massive incompetence when he was in power (example, when the Ottomans bought the Rio de Janeiro, he not only stole it from them, he just had to do it in the most insulting way possible – having the Turkish crew sit on their buts for 3 weeks waiting for the final payment in gold to be delivered b4 he would clear the ship for sail, then confiscating it hours b4 they left. Not surprisingly when SMS Goben handed itself over to the Turkish fleet, they joined the war on the Germans side)

  75. 75.

    burritoboy

    Harding was not on a boat in the San Francisco Bay. He came to San Francisco by train – he had traveled to Alaska, Vancouver and Seattle by ship, but that ship got into a crash in the port of Seattle. He had started noticing health problems in Vancouver while playing golf, and yes, in Vancouver, his doctor made a misdiagnosis of food poisoning. He died seven days later in the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, after having left Vancouver and making speeches in Seattle and Portland.

  76. 76.

    burritoboy

    People forget that Teapot Dome was merely the best-known scandal of the Harding administration. Two members of his administration committed suicide to avoid going to jail. Members of the administration were literally members of organized crime outfits. Members of the Harding administration ran a drug dealing gang in the federal prison system. Harding threw binge-drinking parties in the White House while Prohibition was in effect, often stealing confiscated alcohol to supply them (i.e., Harding stole booze out of police evidence lockers). Harding certainly had at least two extra-marital affairs, and probably more. His buddies stole $225 million in 1923 dollars from the VA system (in today’s dollars, that’s something around 4 billion).

    Multiple members of the Harding administration went to jail, and one of them had his US citizenship revoked. Harding ripped his own stockbroker off for about $2 million in today’s dollars. His widow burned 80% of her husband’s Presidential papers to bury the evidence.

  78. 78.

    stickler

    And, what with all this Harding love, nobody has yet seen fit to quote H.L. Mencken’s devastating takedown of Harding’s palsied use of English:

    I rise to pay my small tribute to Mr. Harding. Setting aside a college professor or two and a half dozen dipsomaniacal newspaper reporters, he takes the first place in my Valhalla of literati. That is to say, he writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up to the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.

    Harding was the anti-Wilson. Simple, corrupt, cynical, horny, drunk. A perfect politician for the 1920 election.

    I read somewhere that he forgot about a Cabinet meeting, and while canoodling with one of his sweeties, was surprised when he heard the Cabinet coming into the hall. So he quickly bundled her into a closet, and there she had to stay while the meeting droned on.

    More than one wagging tongue at the time suggested that Mrs. Harding had assisted him on his journey to Valhalla.

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