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Warren G. Harding

The Poker Player and the Priest: Harding and Wilson

Let me begin with a little heresy. Had Randolph Bourne lived into 1920, I believe he would have seen Warren Harding as a preferable candidate to James Cox, the Democratic candidate for President that year. In doing so, Bourne would have joined in the widespread view that the election of 1920 was not really between Harding and Cox at all, but between Wilsonianism and anti-Wilsonianism. And I do not believe that, given that choice, Bourne would have opted for four more years of what Wilsonianism had come to mean by November 1920. I call this heresy because I believe that Read more