Here is a review of a book about the Teapot Dome Scandal that rocked the Harding administration in 1923.
The book sounds fascinating, but what I really like is the reviewer’s concluding sentences: “His biographer Francis Russell described Harding as ‘jovial and indolent,’ but there is something to be said for men of splendid inaction and arrested ambition in the presidency. Peace, tax cuts, the freeing of political prisoners; Harding accomplished a fair bit between martinis and assignations.”
If a rich oil field were to be discovered today anywhere in the U.S., it would be impossible for there to be any scandal at all — the environmentalists would simply demand that the land by closed to any and all commercial development under an executive order.
