In May 1920, while addressing the Home Market Club in Boston, Warren Harding made the following statement:
“America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.”
The “Return to Normalcy” was a theme in the campaign Harding waged in his pursuit of the Republican
nomination for President of the United States in 1920. It was successful; he won the party’s nomination
and the general election later that year.
He would serve just over two years before passing away in office, but in
his 29 months in office, “normalcy” would not be a word to describe his
administration, even if for much of his term in office he would enjoy a
favorable reputation.
In his assuming the office with the aim of returning to a
period of familiar calm, his serving for such a short period of time, and the
evolving perceptions of his time in Washington, Warren Harding’s presidency has
a familiar ring to it. If there is a
Washington Capital to whom he and his administration might be compared, it
might be to Dino Ciccarelli.
Born and raised in Ohio (the eighth and, to date, last
President from the Buckeye State), Harding spent time as a young man working as
a teacher and in insurance before settling into a role managing and editing a
newspaper in Marion. His position served
as a springboard to politics, starting as a delegate to the Ohio state
Republican convention and leading to his first run for elective office, a
county auditor position.
Harding lost that first bid for office, but he was
successful in his next try, winning election as a state senator. Four years later, he would win election as Lieutenant
Governor of Ohio, a position that allowed him to broaden his political
base. Not so much that it positioned him
for climbing to the next rung on the political ladder, though. He ran afoul of the Ohio political
establishment in the next election and ended up not running for any office. By 1910, though, his star was rising again,
and he won the Republican nomination for governor. He lost in the general election, but took a
turn in the party spotlight in 1912 when he gave the nominating speech on
behalf of William Howard Taft at the 1912 Republican national convention, then took
advantage of the recently ratified 17th Amendment to the
Constitution, allowing for popular election of United States Senators, to win
election to the Senate in 1914.
His pleasant personality and non-confrontational manner when
it came to policy made him an attractive candidate to some for the 1920 presidential
election. The one thing he seemed to
have going for him was, as fellow Ohioan Harry Daugherty said, “he looked like a President.”
Looking like a president did little for Harding at the 1920 Republican
convention. On the first ballot he finished
sixth of 12 candidates receiving votes.
No one won the necessary number, though, and voting went through nine
ballots before Harding finally prevailed on the tenth ballot.
Harding won the general election of 1920, the first sitting
senator to win the presidency. His
agenda could be described generally as one intending to reverse the progressive
policies of the Roosevelt and Wilson administrations. In economic policy he signed tax cuts and new
protective tariffs into law, and it was under his administration that provision
for the President sending a budget to Congress was enacted and the General
Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office) established.
However, his administration would be consumed by events that
were a product of his limited administrative skills. Those shortcomings led to
individuals being installed in positions who were more political supporters
than capable performers. It was a recipe
for corruption. The “Ohio Gang”
and their associates would be the source of a number of scandals in the Harding
administration, the most famous of which (but not the only one) was the “Teapot Dome” scandal, a bribery incident involving Harding’s Secretary of the Interior
that was perhaps the biggest scandal in American politics before Watergate in
the early 1970’s.
By 1923 the pressures of the office and his own history of
health issues began to affect Harding physically. It did not prevent him from undertaking a
trip, a “Voyage of Understanding” to Alaska and to the west coast (with a
stopover in British Columbia; he was the first sitting president to visit
Canada) in an effort to restore some of his reputation before embarking on a
campaign for a second term in office.
However, on the Seattle stop of his tour he fell ill. He would travel to San Francisco,
nevertheless, but upon his arrival fell ill once more. His conditioned worsened
over the next several days, and on August 2, 1923, he suffered a heart attack
from which he did not recover, his presidency over after just 881 days, the
fourth shortest presidency in American history.
Dino Ciccarelli was an undrafted player, despite scoring 119
goals in 164 games over three years with
the London Knights of the Ontario Major Junior Hockey League (now the Ontario
Hockey League). The Minnesota North
Stars signed him as a free agent in September 1979, just before Ciccarelli
began his last season with the Knights, one in which he recorded 50 goals in 62
games.
Ciccarelli made the jump to the NHL the following season and
in short order became a dangerous goal scorer.
In just his second season he scored what would be a career best 55 goals
in 76 games, becoming just the second player in NHL history at the time to
record 55 or more goals in a season by the age of 21 (Wayne Gretzky did it
twice). Early in his eighth season with
the North Stars, he passed Bill Goldsworthy as the franchise leader in goals
scored. In 1988-1989, his ninth season
in Minnesota, he established himself as the franchise leader in goals scored
per game (a record he still holds).
However, on March 7, 1989, he was traded with defenseman Bob
Rouse to the Caps in exchange for Mike Gartner and Larry Murphy in what would
qualify as one of the biggest trades in Caps history.
He did come to the club with issues, as the Washington Post pointed out at the
time:
“Ciccarelli comes to the Capitals with some legal baggage. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of indecent exposure in an incident outside his Eden Prairie, Minn., home in 1987. He was placed on probation for one year and required to attend counseling. Also, last August, he was convicted of assault, spent a day in jail and was fined $1,000 for a stick attack on Toronto's Luke Richardson last season. No other NHL player had ever received a jail term for an on-ice infraction.”
Any issues that might have accompanied Ciccarelli to
Washington were put aside in short order as he scored 12 goals in 11 games to
close the 1988-1989 regular season, including a four-goal outburst against the
Hartford Whalers in an 8-2 rout on March 18th. He added another three goals in six
postseason games, but it was not enough to lift the Caps past the Philadelphia
Flyers in the first round of the playoffs.
The following season, Ciccarelli scored 41 goals for the Caps, becoming
the seventh player in franchise history to score 40 or more in a season. He added another eight in eight games of the 1990
postseason. However, he suffered a knee
injury in Game 2 of the second round against the New York Rangers that ended
his season. This was the postseason in
which John Druce would score 14 goals in 15 games for the Caps. Ciccarelli was matching him goal for goal,
game for game, when he went out. It is
just one more in a series of “what if’s” that haunt this franchise, wondering
how far the Caps might have gone with a healthy Ciccarelli (the Caps were
eliminated in the conference finals against the Boston Bruins).
That 1990 postseason, or more precisely, its aftermath,
would affect Ciccarelli, the club, and the future of the franchise for some
years to come. He and three other
Capitals – Scott Stevens, Geoff Courtnall, and Neil Sheehy – were accused of assaulting
a 17-year old girl on May 12, 1990 in a limousine outside a club in Georgetown. A grand jury decided not to pursue the case, but with respect to the hockey
team, the damage was done. Scott Stevens
signed an offer sheet as a restricted free agent with the St. Louis Blues in
July that the Caps chose not to match (the team accepted five first round draft
picks as compensation). Courtnall, who
scored 77 goals in 159 games in two years with the Caps (plus six in 21
postseason games) was traded in July to the Blues for Peter Zezel and Mike
Lalor, neither of whom made much of an impression on the club. Sheehy missed the entire 1990-1991 regular
season with a broken ankle, then left Washington for the Calgary Flames in free
agency.
Except for two postseason games in which Sheehy played in
the 1991 postseason, Ciccarelli was the only one of the four to play for the
Caps after that incident in May 1990. He
gamely tried to let his performance on the ice serve to rehabilitate his image –
he scored 59 goals in 132 games over the next two seasons despite injuries
limiting him to 54 games in the 1990-1991 season. After the 1991-1992 season, though, one in
which he was 38-38-76 in 78 games, he was traded to the Detroit Red Wings for
Kevin Miller in what has to rank among the worst trades in Caps history. Miller was coming off consecutive 20-goal
seasons for the Red Wings, but he appeared in just ten games for the Caps
(without a goal) before he was traded to the St. Louis Blues for Paul
Cavallini, who scored just five goals in 71 games in his only season in
Washington (Cavallini would be traded for future considerations, which became
Enrico Ciccone, who would later be traded to Tampa Bay for Joe Reekie, who
played in more than 500 games over nine years for the Caps, so there is that).
Ciccarelli went on to play seven more seasons after leaving
Washington scoring 164 goals for Detroit, the Tampa Bay Lightning, and the
Florida Panthers. He retired after the
1998-1999 season with 608 goals, the ninth-most in NHL history at the
time. Today he is one of just 19 players
in NHL history with 600 or more career goals and is a 2010 inductee into the
Hockey Hall of Fame.
Warren Harding came to Washington and served briefly as
President, a well-liked figure during his tenure, but remembered more for the
scandals that occurred under his administration. Dino Ciccarelli came to Washington as an
accomplished and formidable offensive player, one who quickly developed a
devoted following in his short tenure with the club. But he is remembered almost, if not as much for
an incident off the ice as for his accomplishments on it while a Capital. In their misfortune, in no small part a
product of situations they might have avoided, these two had similar histories
in Washington.