““Certainly, the new day was at hand when President Harding took office. The amazing disparity between the job and the man has the right twenties flavour: it was an era of contradictions. Harding was not intelligent or firm or hard-working enough to be a successful President. His other personal weaknesses hardly mattered. True, he committed adultery in a coat-cupboard at the White House because he was too afraid of his wife to take his mistress to more comfortable quarters;””