In 1923, the 19th Amendment was only three years old and women voters had just helped to push the stupidest law ever written in the history of this country into ratification, the 18th Amendment which established Prohibition. Most major cities were already run by crooked political machines, and Prohibition made them even more crooked. Jim Crow was the law in the South, and the KKK was undergoing a major revival in the form of one of the first mass marketing campaigns in history. The Klan was basically the armed wing of the Democratic Party in Dixie, and and their unpassable literacy tests kept black voters from the polls. The inept Warren G. Harding was President, and he died in office in August while half his administration was under indictment for corruption. His successor Calvin Coolidge was merely mediocre. The country was spit then as it is now, but it was between urban, ethnic voters who liked to drink booze, and rural Protestant voters who were dry.

Our democracy is deteriorating no more now than it was then, and the fact that there is a much greater diversity in our leadership would indicate that it is actually a lot better. It is certainly more representative.