Teapot Dome Scandal I

Intro: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: In 1920 the people of the United States voted for a return to normalcy. After a decade of political innovation and war the nation selected as its President an Ohio newspaperman turned politician, Senator Warren Harding. An affable and popular man, Harding rode the public's good feeling into office. Within a short time the burdens of the Presidency and personal disappointments had brought him to the brink of death. A year after that political scandal had so clouded his reputation and that of many of his associates that his administration is almost universally associated in the common memory with corruption.