Warren G. Harding

Harding spent his life in rural Ohio, bought The Marion Star as a young man and turned it into a success, then moved through the state senate, a stint as lieutenant governor, a failed governor's race in 1910, and election to the U.S. Senate in 1914. He was a long shot for the Republican nomination in 1920 until the convention deadlocked and he emerged on the tenth ballot, ran a front porch campaign from Marion, promised a return to normalcy after World War I, and crushed James M. Cox in a landslide. His cabinet had serious names—Andrew Mellon at Treasury, Herbert Hoover at Commerce, Charles Ev…