"Return to normalcy" was a campaign slogan used by Warren G. Harding during the

1920 United States presidential election The 1920 United States presidential election was the 34th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 2, 1920. In the first election held after the end of World War I and the first election after the ratification of the Ninete ...

. Harding would go on to win the election with 60.4% of the popular vote.

1920 election

In a speech delivered on May 14, 1920, Harding proclaimed that America needed "not nostrums, but normalcy". World War I and the Spanish flu had upended life, and Harding said that it altered the perspective of humanity. He argued that the solution was to seek normalcy by restoring life to how it was before the war. Harding's conception of normalcy for the 1920s included

deregulation Deregulation is the process of removing or reducing state regulations, typically in the economic sphere. It is the repeal of governmental regulation of the economy. It became common in advanced industrial economies in the 1970s and 1980s, as a ...

civic engagement Civic engagement or civic participation is any individual or group activity addressing issues of public concern. Civic engagement includes communities working together or individuals working alone in both political and non-political actions to ...

, and

isolationism Isolationism is a political philosophy advocating a national foreign policy that opposes involvement in the political affairs, and especially the wars, of other countries. Thus, isolationism fundamentally advocates neutrality and opposes entang ...

. He rejected the idealism of Woodrow Wilson and the

activism Activism (or Advocacy) consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in Social change, social, Political campaign, political, economic or Natural environment, environmental reform with the desire to make Social change, changes i ...

of Roosevelt, favoring the earlier isolationist policy of the United States. Although detractors of the time tried to belittle the word "normalcy" as a neologism as well as a malapropism, saying that it was poorly coined by Harding (as opposed to the more accepted term '' normality''), there was contemporaneous discussion and evidence that ''normalcy'' had been listed in dictionaries as far back as 1857. During the campaign Harding, a newspaper editor, addressed the issue of the word's origin, claiming that ''normalcy'' but not ''normality'' appeared in his dictionary. Harding's position attracted support during the 1920 presidential election, which he won with 60.3% of the popular vote.

Other usage

Chalmers M. Roberts of '' The Washington Post'' compared the desire for a "return to normalcy" in 1920 to the 1946 midterms following World War II and the 1992 presidential election following the

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

. The 12th episode of ''

Boardwalk Empire ''Boardwalk Empire'' is an American period crime drama television series created by Terence Winter and broadcast on the premium cable channel HBO. The series is set chiefly in Atlantic City, New Jersey, during the Prohibition era of the 1920s and ...

'' takes place during the 1920 election and is titled " A Return to Normalcy". The phrase "return to normalcy" became associated with the 2020 presidential campaign of Joe Biden, specifically referring to Biden's promises to end the "divisiveness of the Trump years," as well as his campaign's focus on tackling the

COVID-19 pandemic in the United States The COVID-19 pandemic in the United States is a part of the COVID-19 pandemic, worldwide pandemic of COVID-19, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by SARS-CoV-2, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). In the Uni ...

References

External links

"Normalcy"''The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy'', 3rd ed.
edited by E. D. Hirsch, Jr., et al. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. .
"A Time for Normalcy"
by Evan Jenkins, ''Columbia Journalism Review'', January/February 2002. American political catchphrases United States presidential domestic programs Warren G. Harding {{US-history-stub

1920 election

Other usage

See also

References

External links