Harding > Wilson

Taking historians with a grain of salt

[NOTE: This is Day One of my new blog, so I’m sending out two posts on one day, which will not be my usual modus operandi.]

Historians have generally ranked Woodrow Wilson as a “near-great” president, while ranking his successor, Warren Harding at or near the bottom of U.S. presidents. Last week, I criticized this comparison in an op-ed, “Harding, Wilson and the Perils of Expertise.” As I note in that piece, in 1921, Harding delivered the most courageous civil rights speech ever given by a U.S. president, whereas Woodrow Wilson was arguably the most virulently racist president in U.S. history. In other ways, the modest (albeit imperfect) Mr. Harding had a string of solid achievements during his brief tenure, while Wilson’s time in office set some of the 20th century’s worst tendencies in motion. My article elaborates on some of these comparisons, and I’ll likely have more to say about these two presidents in the future.