Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Our listeners will recall that our previous episode covered these two men and how they defined an entire era in American history.

They championed a progressive movement in response to profound changes in the social, political, and economic life of the country.

With Roosevelt's death in 1919 and the end of Wilson's presidency in 1921, America turned the page to a new era. It was now the

1920s, and the American people were tired of progressivism and its penchant for government activism. To emphasize the

point, voters turned to two men who couldn't have been any more different from Roosevelt and Wilson

in terms of both policy and temperament. These two figures, Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge,

would lead the nation into a new era of government restraint.

Just as our previous episodes focused on two progressive icons, this series will focus on

Harding and Coolidge, the two pillars of 1920s conservatism.

If you look at the history of American presidential elections all the way back to 1824,

which was around the time more people were able to participate and vote in presidential elections,

and you look at which presidential candidate had the widest margins in terms of percentage over

their opponent since that year, you'll find one name at the top,

Warren G. Harding. In the 1920 presidential election, Warren Harding received 60.3% of the popular vote,

while his opponent, James Cox, got 34.1% of the vote. That gave Harding a margin of victory

of over 26%. It's a margin wider than anything Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower,

Ronald Reagan, Andrew Jackson, and Abraham Lincoln ever enjoyed. Harding may have benefited from the fact that there was a

socialist running for president named Eugene Debs, who got about three and a half percent of the vote

and probably took more votes away from Cox than Harding. But that's not the point. The point is that

Harding's victory over Cox ranks among the greatest in American history.

When Warren G. Harding died, he was widely mourned. When his body was transported in his coffin by train,

an estimated 9 million Americans lined the tracks to pay tribute. The San Francisco Chronicle

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