Late Nights With Warren G. Harding

Move over Jay Leno . . . I'm spending my late nights with Warren G. Harding. Really. Or, at least I have been.

Over the past month or so I've been writing various essays late at night (post-Olympics at times) and my most recent foray has taken me into the life and times of Warren G. Harding who, by most accounts, was the worst president in U.S. history I've always wondered: "Why the low ranking, Warren?"

Well, once you get into this fella, you find out more than you want to know. For example:

Harding was nominated (literally) in a back room deal at the 1920 Republican National Convention in Chicago because some powerful lobbyists and deal makers thought that the Ohio Senator "looked" presidential and had the charm needed to woo the ladies. This was the first national election influenced by media, and also the first following the women's suffrage movement, and Harding was elected in the largest national landslide in history. But in the aftermath of the extreme suffering of the first World War, few cared for anything other than a return to the good old days.

Harding didn't disappoint. He spoke of God often, and about getting back to them old time values, but all the while his administration was shot through with enormous secret scandals that involved money-laundering, bribery, and corruptions of the highest order. Harding had also managed to keep not one, but TWO, mistresses on the chain at the same time, and even fathered a child from the couch in his senatorial office and had secret service agents pay off the ladies with hush money.

But all of this was kept secret and did not come to light until after his death--his own demise in office shrouded with mystery. Did his wife poison him out of vengeance? Did one of his money-laundering buddies have it in for him?

Old Warren is a fascinating bird. And he's keeping me awake at nights writing about him.

Now, all I have to do is find a publisher for all of this soap opera fodder.