The "shadow" in the title refers to the allegation, which dogged Harding his whole life, that he was part-Negro. Oddly, his two long-time affairs, with Carrie Phillips and Nan Britton, were pretty much ignored or unknown.
Harding was generally unwilling to take sides on controversial issues, as reflected in his horrible voting record in the Senate, where he missed over 40% of the votes during his Senate term. This unwillingness to commit himself gives him low marks for leadership, as a good leader will lead, whereas Harding mostly followed.
Harding's aversion to taking stands led to his being nominated for president at the 1920 Republican convention. The three leading candidates were deadlocked, and the convention eventually turned to Harding, nominating him on the ninth ballot. Much has been made of the so-called "smoke-filled room", where the GOP power brokers supposedly settled on Harding as a compromise candidate. Harding's campaign manager had carefully cultivated delegates in the months leading up to the convention, getting them to commit to switching their allegiance to Harding on the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th ballot. The "smoke-filled" room was simply the natural outcome of the clever and persistent work of Harry Daugherty, Harding's campaign manager.
One of Harding's great strengths was his oratorical ability. He gave great speeches, managing to inspire people while saying virtually nothing of substance. During his presidency he gradually realized he would have to start taking stands and leading. Word of the corruption within his administration started becoming known at the end of his presidency, which was cut short by his death in 1923. Up to that point, Harding had been quite popular with his "return to normalcy" message.
Harding reminds me a lot of Ronald Reagan, Both quite affable, both good speechmakers, both taking a hands-off approach to governing, and both too trusting of their subordinates. Harding in particular had longtime close relationships with some of his underlings, and refused to believe they could do any wrong, even when presented with evidence to this effect. For their complete lack of real leadership, both Harding and Reagan should be ranked in the bottom third of U.S. presidents.
I can't quit without discussing the infamous "smoke-filled room". The idea of party leaders being involved in the selection process is, I would argue, a good thing, not a bad thing. In 1968 the Democratic party tried to recover from the debacle of that election by democratizing the selection process for the 1972 nominee. In 1968 Humphrey became the nominee without winning a single primary. The Democrats, determined to avoid that horrible result, went to a caucus system for 1972. The result we got was George McGovern. Now, I must confess that in the naivete of my youth I was deeply involved in the McGovern campaign. We took over the delegate selection process, based on caucuses, and all of the delegates to that year's Democratic convention from my Congressional District were McGovern delegates. In many instances nationwide, sitting governors and senators were not selected as delegates, which, in retrospect, is absurd.
Since the delegate selection process was "democratized" in 1972, we have had a plethora of bad candidates. McGovern in 1972, Carter in 1976 and 1980, Raegan in 1980 and 1984, Mondale in 1984, George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, Hillary Clinton in 2016, and Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. The 2016 campaign was especially pathetic, with the two major party candidates being among the worst in the history of our country. The GOP nominated a man completely devoid of moral character, while the Dems nominated a candidate completely unable to relate to the voters. I say, let's let the professionals in each party have their proper influence in the delegate selection process, and our country will be much better off!
Another problem with this over-emphasis of election vs. selection is the matter of the election of judges. We saw recently in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse how bad the judges can be who are elected. In Sedgewick County, Kansas, where I practiced law, the election of judges led to absurd consequences, such as when the judge rated the best judge in the county by the bar association, out of 25 or so total, was defeated in the Republican primary because the anti-abortion folks, who had taken over the party, did not think he expressed a strong enough position against abortion rights. Since winning in the GOP primary has become tantamount to election, we were stuck with a judge who proved to be a horrible judge and a despicable human being.
The solution is to have "open primaries", where the top two candidates go on to the general election, regardless of party. My biggest disappointment during the year and a half I lived in Oregon was that state's rejection of the open primary when it was on the ballot. Until the open primary is universally adopted, we will continue to have the ugly political divide that has characterized our politics in recent years.
Ranked choice voting would also help to avoid the ridiculous extremes. As an example of how it would work, consider the 2000 election, in which Bush won because he got 537 more votes (supposedly) than Gore in Florida. Had the state had rank choice voting, there is no doubt Gore would have won, for most of the 97,421 votes Ralph Nader received would surely have gone to Gore as the second choice of those voters.
