CSotD: Sometimes a Dull Moment
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Given the number of people predicting that Donald J. Trump will be remembered as America's worst president ever, I thought it might be interesting to go back to Inauguration Day 1921 and see how cartoonists welcomed Warren G. Harding to the post, given that he is our current Worst President Ever.
And I was right. It might have been interesting.
As Whittier wrote, however,
For all sad words of tongue and pen,
The saddest are these, 'It might have been'.
And that poem is a whole lot more interesting than the cartoons I found, apparently because it was only after Harding's unexpected death that his flaws as an administrator — Teapot Dome and all that — began to emerge.
In fact, he'd campaigned on a platform of normalcy.
America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.
– Warren G. Harding
Good Lord, could anything be more unpromising for political cartoonists than Normalcy?
Even E.A. Bushnell could muster up nothing more than a "Ship of State" cartoon with Harding at the wheel, and he was in Harding's home state of Ohio, though in Cincinnati, while Harding was in Marion.
And bear in mind that it's impossible to blame deadline pressure for any lack of inspiration. This was before the Twentieth Amendment moved Inauguration Day from March to January, not that the current two month stretch between Election Day and the inauguration isn't enough time to come up with something.
But, my goodness, with four months at your disposal, you'd even have time to take some art lessons ferchrissake.
Or (same paper – The Republic, Columbus, Indiana) to learn the difference between an editor and a publisher, how to spell "Washington" or at least to read the first sentence of the story for which you're writing a headline.
As a former reporter, I can attest to the fury of seeing the headline not fit your story, but, as an editor, I can explain:
"Publisher" would not fit the line, while "Editor" would.
("Wombat" would also have fit the line and been equally accurate.)
As it happens, they could also have written "Buckeye Will Be First Publisher To Be President" back before the election, since both Harding and his opponent, James Cox, were from Ohio and were newspaper publishers (Cox went on to found a media chain that is still around.).
But I digress, except that I'm surprised to read that Harding was the first president to have been a Senator.
In any case, this fellow whose sig I can't quite decode — Kwett? — not only captures our post-war desire to return to Normalcy but lays out the various issues the new president and his GOP Congress were facing.
The basket full of eggs/promises is a brilliant touch, with Uncle Sam no doubt hoping for a smooth road ahead.
Ding Darling's offering is gloriously optimistic, and any hint of "Don't screw this up" is pretty well wiped out by the old-fashioned old lady at lower left, labeled "Democratic Party" and mumbling to herself, "Well, Goodbye. I guess I'll be going now."
My guess is that, if anything keeps Harding from fulfilling his promises, Ding isn't expecting to lay it on his doorstep.
By contrast, Morris sees the Inauguration as a simple handoff, a view I didn't see elsewhere.
Wilson appears to have worn out his welcome, and coverage in the news only adds to the historic mystery of how much the American people knew about the stroke that, according to current scholarship, left his wife Edith performing the functions of the presidency.
There were two stories that popped up time and again: One was that his health would not allow him to attend the inauguration, the other that he was planning to re-open his law practice.
However, even that latter story included reactions of surprise from those who did not think he was up to it, while the former described his Secret Service detail helping him get to his car by placing his feet one by one on the necessary path. There was also a long, rather argumentative piece in a few papers that detailed every time he'd blown his nose since he was three years old.
From which I would conclude that the poor state of his health was well known to the American public, if not to Wilson himself, who, in 1920, had mentioned running for a third term.
Briggs was the only cartoonist I found who simply had fun with the day.
On the other hand, a few advertisers rose to the occasion.
You don't have to have been around in 1921 to remember Post Toasties. I have no idea how Kellogg's Corn Flakes managed to wipe them off the shelves with an identical, unremarkable product, yet they disappeared about a decade ago and it was kind of like when you see an actor die at an extremely advanced age and you're mostly surprised that he was still alive.
My own theory is that the brand failed because of what eating them did to your body. Poor little Bobby! Cute face, but the kid had the arms and hands of an orangutan.
And, speaking of the Kid, he was around then, too.
Finally, this cartoon, by someone named Wilson, continues the theme of how little anyone seemed to care that the other Wilson was making his exit.
I think that, in the interest of posterity, someone with such a generic name should adopt a pen name that is a little easier to track down, but cartoonists and other artists visiting here should be glad he didn't, because, in trying to find him, I came across the Stripper's Guide profile of W.O. Wilson, a different fellow entirely though of roughly the same vintage.
And thereby discovered this.
See? Aren't you glad you stuck with this otherwise unremarkable posting?
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