The playboy presidents: Bill Clinton and Warren G. Harding

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I have been vindicated! For years I have been comparing the Clinton family to the family of Warren Gamaliel Harding, our 29th president and a president of dark memory, at least to most liberal historians. For me, Warren was sheer slapstick, as to some degree his modern-day equivalent was, Bill Clinton. And forget not their gruesome wives.

I began my historical comparisons in the 1996 bestselling book, Boy Clinton: The Political Biography. For years, I punctuated my syndicated column with references to the two families. Then in my 2007 book, The Clinton Crack-Up, I clinched the comparison in a reminder of how that Little Rock monstrosity, the Clinton Library, compared so favorably with the Harding Memorial in Warren’s hometown, Marion, Ohio. But now, you ask, how am I vindicated? Well, America’s historical memory is not very strong. Comparing Bill with a 1920s president to a modern American audience was not easy. Yet, by month’s end it will be much easier. In fact, the comparison will be inescapable.

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