pplpod Episode 68 traces Warren G. Harding’s fast rise from small-town Ohio publisher to U.S. senator to 29th President promising a “return to normalcy” after World War I. We track the 1920 landslide with Calvin Coolidge, the postwar reset—Budget and Accounting Act creating a modern federal budget, the Bureau of the Budget’s new discipline, veterans’ care, and a business-forward climate of lower taxes and higher tariffs (Fordney–McCumber). Abroad, we unpack the Washington Naval Conference and its arms-limiting treaties, plus efforts to stabilize a world still running hot. Then the shadows: backroom cronies, Teapot Dome and other scandals that erupted after Harding’s 1923 death on a Western tour, and the split screen between public charm and private misjudgments. Reputation, revision, and the puzzle of a presidency that mixed genuine institutional upgrades with notorious lapses.

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