Lately, with all of the impeachment talk that has been going around, it seems as if there has been a renewed interest in both the impeachment process and in former President Nixon. (Clinton and Johnson, too, but mostly the crook who immortalized himself by uttering the words “I am not a crook,” during a press conference addressing his crookedness.) And while it understandably gives us comfort during these trying times to look to a story of how our most recent crooked President was (successfully) dealt with (even if it was nearly fifty years ago), I can’t but help but find more of a parallel (and comfort) in the story of the crooked President who served fifty years before Nixon. I am referring, of course, to Warren G. Harding.
First, a very brief and inadequate history lesson: Harding was the dark horse candidate from Ohio who was elected to great surprise and consternation in 1920. Well, surprise and consternation to many, but not to the oilmen who funded his campaign. In return for their support Harding appointed an extremely oil industry-friendly cabinet, including Albert Bacon Fall as Secretary of the Interior. One of Fall’s first acts was to set aside the decision to keep the oil reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyoming as just that—a reserve—and instead lease the rights to Mammoth Oil, owned by Harry Sinclair.
The lease was awarded in secret, meaning there were no other bidders, which was probably for the best, seeing as how the transaction also involved literal suitcases full of cash from Sinclair to Fall, as well as the gift of a sprawling New Mexico ranch for Fall to relax on after a busy day of accepting bribes and crippling the nation’s strategic defenses.
Of course, as so often happens with government secrets and a free press, this secret didn’t stay secret for very long, and the Wall Street Journal broke the story in 1922. Congress, to their credit, soon launched an investigation, which caused Fall to step down from his position. Luckily his friend Sinclair was still looking out for him, and, apparently impressed with Fall’s ability to successfully carry large bags of cash bribes, put him to work obtaining oil leases in the Soviet Union.
Harding, meanwhile, sensing that his work in Washington was done, began to make plans for his post-Presidential life. These plans included a year-long ’round the world cruise with fifty of his closest friends—all paid for by Harry Sinclair, on one of Harry Sinclair’s (presumably nicer) yachts.
All of this while the congressional investigation was slowly, but steadily, chugging along. (Sound familiar?) In the course of their investigation Congress eventually subpoenaed Sinclair himself, who, for obvious reasons, refused to appear. (Also very familiar.) Chug chug chug went the wheels of justice, though, and in 1929 the Supreme Court finally ruled that yes, you do have to answer a congressional subpoena, and that failing to do so was considered contempt of congress. Which is exactly what Sinclair went to prison for. (Unlike Fall, who went to prison that same year for accepting a bribe.)
In retrospect, of course, all of this seems so inevitable. Of course Sinclair and Fall went to prison for their crimes—that’s what criminals do. But at the time, and for those seven long years between the story breaking in the Wall Street Journal and the sound of the prison doors clanging shut, I’m sure it didn’t seem very inevitable at all. I’m sure it seemed like the process just wasn’t working, and that we had fallen into an abyss of corruption from which we could never return. And then, slowly but surely, we did. And everything was back to normal (for fifty years, at least).
At this point you’re probably wondering if Harding himself was ever brought to justice. The answer is: in a way. Technically speaking, Harding was relieved of his position, and in one of the most satisfying ways possible—one in which I can only hope will soon be all too familiar to us as well.
Harding died his third year in office.