‘I don’t think I’m big enough for the Presidency,’ Warren G Harding complained after his inauguration as President of the United States in 1921: ‘I can’t make a damn thing out of this tax problem. I listen to one side and they seem right, and then – God! – I talk to the other side and they seem just as right … Somewhere there must be a book that tells all about it. My God! But this is a hell of a place for a man like me to be in.’ 

Harding was indeed a singularly incompetent president, and is remembered today largely for his role in the Teapot Dome scandal. He should probably have stuck to doing what he did best, which consisted of appointing crooks to high office and sleeping with people to whom he was not married. One