Lately, former House speaker and presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has been calling opponent Mitt Romney the weakest front-runner in modern times.
On CNN, he clarified it when he said Romney is probably the “weakest front-runner since Leonard Wood in 1920.”
So, who was Leonard Wood?
Leonard Wood was a U.S. general, as well as a doctor, and a very close friend of Theodore Roosevelt, says presidential historian Michael Beschloss. He tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz that Wood was running for president before the 1920 Republican convention and was thought to be a shoe-in for the nomination.
“A lot of people thought he was going to be nominated … [but] he reached his peak and then flamed out,” Beschloss says. “He finally lost the nomination to Warren Harding, the senator from Ohio, one of the worst presidents in American history.”
So if Mitt Romney is Leonard Wood, does that make Newt Gingrich the Warren Harding in this analogy?
“I think [Gingrich] would consider it slander if it was said by someone else,” Beschloss says.
Leonard Wood was not a great candidate, Beschloss says, but Warren Harding owed him a lot. If not for his poor candidacy, Harding would not have become president, he says.
“The result was that Wood got what he really wanted, which was to be Governor General of the Philippines,” he says.
Wood died in 1927, but his legacy lives on at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri.
If Mitt Romney makes it to the Republican convention in Tampa has not locked in a majority of delegates, Beschloss says he could in fact compete with Wood for being the “weakest front-runner.”
“If that happens, [there’s] a good chance Romney will not be nominated and there could be a dark horse like Warren Harding or someone a lot better who ends up getting the nomination,” he says.