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SEIFFE:  Obama's Real Mentor

Monday, June 30, 2008 

By Ralf Seiffe

Pundits have recently enjoyed easy work in predicting the sort of administration each of the presumptive presidential candidates would lead.  They point to earlier presidents as models of prospective bad behavior; Democrats say McCain would be a mere extension of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue’s current resident while Obama’s detractors foresee a second term for Jimmy Carter.  McCain’s record argues against the Bush connection and he’s demonstrated his character with a long history of Senate votes, however faulty.  Obama’s lack of a voting record makes the Carter analogy rank speculation but his personal record points to another failed presidency--that of  our twenty-ninth, Warren Gamaliel Harding.

There are several areas in which one finds parallels, starting with the significance of the presidential election.  Every so often, the contest has an atmosphere of gravity, a sense that this one will matter more than most.  This feeling applied in 1920 as it does in 2008 for similar reasons.  Back then, the nation was emerging from a period of Progressive political entrepreneurism.  The outgoing Wilson Administration had used the Great War as its rationale to chip away at American’s constitutional rights and the new income tax to fuel a vast expansion of the federal government’s mission.  One million soldiers sent to France had military and cultural experiences which would have been inconceivable to them just five years earlier.  America had lurched into the world’s premier economy and a world power in less than a decade.  Combined with the social change that had occurred since the turn of the century, many Americans longed for a period of rest from the velocity of change the U.S. was experiencing.

Now, like then, Americans are tired of war and troubled as we rationalize our now diminishing role as a world power.  Some believe that President Bush is as evil as Wilson but they are a small group.  Polls show more concern for our economic situation.  The challenges that China, India and soon, Africa, represent--combined with the iron logic of globalization--have many pining for a slower pace and the romanticized outcomes of the American “good old days”.   They want relief from these challenges and look back a generation to a time we thought government had the best solutions.

Harding called for a return to “Normalcy”, a nebulous, one-word campaign slogan that still challenges lexicographers.  For the 1920 voter, Normalcy could mean lower taxes, ending Prohibition or letting the genius of the American mind produce the blessings of prosperity.  It could also mean a return to a simpler time before such newfangled items like radio, automobiles or jazz destroyed the nation’s order and tranquility.

Obama’s “Change” is another single word campaign slogan that also defies serious analysis.  Like “Normalcy” this undefined term means whatever the listener believes it to mean.  In that, it’s the perfect campaign strategy.  It can mean higher taxes (paid only by someone wealthier than me) to funding a second Great Society, creation of a new prohibition, this time to control the chimera of global warming, and, for the Bush haters, the hollow victory of a term-limited regime change.  Many Obama supporters seek the comfort of new entitlements and for them dependency is the new “Normalcy”.  In this they are not much different than their great grandparents and will once again support the candidate that promises peace of mind.

As a senator, Harding had been a key supporter of the XIX Amendment and the 1920 election was the first in which women enjoyed universal suffrage.  They rewarded Harding by voting overwhelmingly for him.  Barack Obama breaks the color barrier and the expectation is that he will bring African-American voters to the polls in the greatest numbers.  In addition, he’s motivating young people who have threatened to upset things since 1972, but who have never quite materialized at the polls.

1920 was remarkable for the way the media covered the race.  It was the first time that the major news-gathering organizations functioned and also the first time election results were broadcast on the radio as a commercial enterprise.  Harding used the media to spread the message that he was an ordinary American comfortable with his neighbors on the front porch.  Obama is also the beneficiary of new mediums and some remarkable technology that allows him to tailor the message to micro segments of voters who receive a message that they already want to hear and in exchange, donate to the campaign.  Both candidates’ media strategies were and are brilliant for their times.

Harding actually called his strategy the “Front Porch Campaign” which featured invitations to the media to come to Ohio to listen to him discuss events.  They were then expected to distribute the message through the nation’s newspapers.  The public was invited too and, during the much shorter 1920 campaign, an astounding 600,000 visitors came to the Harding residence in Marion to meet the candidate.  Hollywood celebrities, including Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks made the journey.  Now, Barack Obama travels and speaks to astonishingly large crowds.   He also has the advantage of a fawning media which reports not substance but on Obama as the great orator.  Today’s Hollywood is in Obama’s camp in the same way they once stood for Harding.

Both Harding and Obama started out as underdogs in their presidential quests.  Harding was a handsome, charismatic, one-term United States senator after having served two terms as an Ohio state senator.  Harding’s career as a hard-working journalist had inculcated him with the party insiders and he was part of what would be known to the rest of America as the “Ohio Gang”.  He promised to reverse the previous administration’s war policies and break with the winners of the Great War over reparations.

Obama is also a handsome, charismatic, one-term United States senator after having served two terms as an Illinois state senator.  He also did his party’s bidding and like Harding before him Obama has become one of his state’s political insiders, a member of the “Chicago Machine”. If he wins, Americans will learn of that connection and revile it in the same way we once regarded the “Ohio Gang”.  In addition, Obama promises to reverse the previous administration’s war policies and break with the work the very same major participants of the Great War are now conducting with Iran.

The hallmark of the short Harding Administration was its scandals.  No credible evidence of Harding’s personal corruption has surfaced but his appointments were exceedingly crooked.  Apparently, he was a man that could not say “no” to his friends.  These “friends” sold pardons, looted the Veteran’s Bureau, sold “alien property” for their own benefit and rigged the business of a federal oil field for personal gain.  Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall accepted $400,000 in “loans” from oil men who later successfully leased Teapot Dome, a federal oilfield which Fall administered.  Had he been asked about the Teapot Dome Scandal, one can almost hear Harding say “That wasn’t the Albert Fall that I knew”.

From this vantage, it is impossible to foresee how ethical a prospective Obama Administration would be.  Nevertheless, there are indications he might have the same sort of personnel problem Harding did.  Already we’ve seen Democrat insider James Johnson forced to resign for accepting gigantic, low-rate “loans” from Countrywide, the mortgage originator which sold its sub-prime mortgages to Fannie Mae while Johnson’s was CEO of the government-guaranteed corporation.   

Eric Holder, who still serves as half of the remaining Obama VP committee, was involved in the pardon of Marc Rich which continues to taint the Clinton Administration and the Justice Department.  This sounds like another echo from the Jazz Age; Harry Daugherty, Harding’s Attorney General, was accused of actually selling pardons.  One wonders if we completely understand the circumstances of the extremely unlikely Rich pardon; a competent press would insist Mr. Holder reveal the facts in the interest of “Change”.   

We are not yet aware of the full story on the real estate deal the recently-convicted Tony Rezko engineered for Senator Obama.  We may find out how corrupt the relationship between Obama and the Chicago Machine really is if the media chooses to investigate a former Illinois State Senator now working for Obama.  This product of the “Chicago Gang” worked for the governor for 60 days and was paid the equivalent of more than $1 million in pension value by Illinois’s taxpayers.  After the windfall, she resigned to “volunteer” for Obama’s campaign.

Ralf Seiffe advises business start-ups and product launches from Chicago, Illinois and is a political analyst and columnist for the Illinois Leader and Illinois Review.

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