Don't Know Much

Who Said It? (5/13/20)

America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy

Warren G. Harding (May 14, 1920)

Senator Warren G. Harding (1920) Image Wikipedia

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.

My best judgment of America’s needs is to steady down, to get squarely on our feet, to make sure of the right path. Let’s get out of the fevered delirium of war, with the hallucination that all the money in the world is to be made in the madness of war and the wildness of its aftermath. Let us stop to consider that tranquillity at home is more precious than peace abroad, and that both our good fortune and our eminence are dependent on the normal forward stride of all the American people. . . .

Source: Teaching American History

Following World War I and the Spanish flu pandemic, Senator Warren G. Harding (Ohio-Rep.) ran for president on a platform of a “return to normalcy.” He won the 1920 presidential election in a popular and electoral landslide, the first incumbent Senator to be elected president. His presidency was marred by the Teapot Dome scandal and other corruption in his cabinet which emerged fully after his death in office. Harding died while on a national tour in San Francisco on August 2, 1923. He was succeeded by Calvin Coolidge.

Resources on Harding from the Library of Congress

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