Ninety-five years ago Warren G. Harding was elected president, by a 26 percent popular vote margin, 60 to 34 percent, a margin not matched since the unopposed re-election of James Monroe a century further back. He has been in the news lately, because of genetic findings (1) that he did not have, as his Democratic opponents claimed at the time, African ancestry and (2) that he fathered a daughter with his lover Nan Britton.

Harding has been rated by historians as one of America’s worst presidents, but in a New York Times opinion piece Ronald Radosh and Allis Radosh, who are working on a biography of Harding, make a persuasive case that he was a far better president than that.