ABSTRACT
On March 4, 1921, Warren G. Harding took the oath of office for the presidency of the United States. Woodrow Wilson, the outgoing president, accompanied Harding to the steps of the US Capitol but could not muster the energy to stay for the inaugural ceremony. His health had been shattered by a debilitating stroke, which was partially induced by his exhausting and ultimately failed effort to win Senate approval for the League of Nations (New York Times, 5 March, 1921, p. 1). Rarely in US history has a change in administration been marked by such a dramatic change in presidential style and substance. Wilson, the former college professor and a devout Presbyterian, who had championed the progressive ideals of government activism (Link, 1947; 1965; Blum, 1956; Garraty, 1956), was replaced by the cigarsmoking, whiskey-drinking Harding, who believed that business ascendancy was not only a sign of economic vigour but an unimpeded path to national prosperity (Leuchtenburg, 1958; Hicks, 1960). Sixty years later, on January 20, 1980, another inaugural also signalled a forceful redirection in the course of twentieth-century American politics. Ronald Reagan, the former movie actor and television pitch man, replaced the born again Christian and nuclear physicist Jimmy Carter as president of the United States. Unbridled private enterprise was again in full stride.
