Harding was an average man whose friends played him for a fool
They abused the nation and the man to keep their pockets full
Our consecrated president with a chi Id by an affair
Assured me and the country with a wife whose name was clar.

[Chorus]
How the flappers danced
How the movies flashed
How the strength of business boomed before the market crashed--
And how the modern world was born
In the aftermath of war
While the ballyhoo went on and on before the market hit the floor.

Late peace was made with Germany and we marched and celebrated
For Lindbergh's flight and Prohibition we toasted and we hated
Our government in Washington by, of, and for the people
Isolated and disarmed the country that seemed to have saved the world.

I worked the naval oil reserves in Wyoming's Teapot Dome
When the Secretary of the Interior sold the navy down the road
From the oil fields to Canada where corporate deals were made
For secret loans and gifts before the Congress learned the game.

[Repeat chorus]

So how did free America take to the selling of its oil
And the butchering of offices by appointed criminals?
They called the senate committee's scandal mongers malicious and unclean
Bolsheviks and partisans with truths the "country did not need.

The Harding I remember our hail-fellow-well-met
Confused by native faith in friends and naive unworldliness
Died poisoned in Alaska as the scandals came to fame
Some said it was his wife's revenge or mercy for his name.

[Repeat chorus]

© 1984 by Richard Meyer