During the war President Woodrow Wilson had promised to "make the world safe for democracy." After the war, however, Americans lost what little interest they had in policing the world, and instead elected Republican Warren G. Harding, a small-town newspaper publisher from Ohio, who promised to return the country to what he called "normalcy." Although Harding was known as an easygoing and amiable leader, his administration was rife with corruption. Several of his advisers committed suicide when they were caught stealing public funds. And his secretary of the interior, Albert Fall, arranged for the private development of a federally owned oil field called Teapot Dome in Wyoming in exchange for a one-hundred-thousanddollar bribe. The resulting scandal, known as the Teapot Dome affair, weakened Harding's administration and also his health.

Harding died suddenly of a heart attack on August 2, 1923, and was succeeded by Vice President...