Letter: Bush reminiscent of Mencken’s ‘Stonehead’

Sunday, April 8, 2007 | 7:28 a.m.

During the early 1920s the outstanding newspaper columnist H.L. Mencken, writing for The Baltimore Sun, labeled then-president Warren Gamaliel Harding as "The Great Stonehead."

Mr. Mencken's Monday morning columns were said to instill fear in the minds of politicians everywhere because of his powerful, incisive and scathing prose.

Harding and his administration are widely thought to be the worst in the country's history. Scandals were almost everyday events. Corruption and incompetence were the standards of that administration.

The most infamous scandal was called Teapot Dome. In that scandal Harding's secretary of the Interior Department tried to give the Naval Oil Reserve below Teapot Dome, a relatively small, approximately 80-million-barrel reserve, to a friend, Harry Sinclair.

So now, in 2007, we, or at least I, have to wonder what Mr. Mencken would write about our current president. I chuckle as I contemplate H.L. Mencken's choice of words. Would he say that we now have "The Greatest Stonehead"?

Paul Engel, Henderson