Warren G Harding of Ohio
“Return to Normalcy” was the great campaign-rallying cry of Republican Senator Warren G. Harding. A native of Ohio, Harding didn’t leave his front porch in Marion as he campaigned for the Presidency. He was running against another Ohioan, Democratic Governor James Cox of Dayton. Neither was the acclaimed nominee of their party. Harding won the nomination on the ninth ballot after a backroom deal was cut: the origin of the term “smoke filled room”. Cox’s nomination at the Democratic Convention took forty-four ballots.
While Harding ultimately won the Presidential election, both Vice Presidential candidates would become President soon. Calvin Coolidge of Vermont would succeed to the Presidency when Harding died of a heart attack at fifty-seven years old, only two years into his term of office. And Cox’s running mate was the thirty-nine year old Franklin Roosevelt, twelve years away from his successful Presidential run.
Voter Fatigue
“Return to Normalcy” resonated with the American people. The past eight years under Democratic President Woodrow Wilson included rapid financial growth, World War I and the Flu Epidemic of 1918 (not 1917 as the current President continues to say). It also saw the growth of American radicalism and anarchism, the creation of a Socialist Party, debate over the new League of Nations, and, probably most importantly to the voters, a post war recession.
“Normalcy”: back to the “good old days” when things were calmer. Even activist President Teddy Roosevelt, in office from 1901 to 1909, didn’t stir America up as much as the events of the Wilson Administration.
Harding let Coolidge do the campaigning across the nation, but he didn’t invent the “front porch campaign”. Another Ohioan, Republican Governor William McKinley, successfully won the Presidency from his porch in Canton, Ohio in 1896. In fact, Harding modeled the front of his home after McKinley’s, perhaps foreshadowing his own campaign.
And Harding was careful not to say too much, or the wrong thing. Famed writer H.L. Mencken grew frustrated with Harding’s statements:
“…(the statement) reminds me of a string of wet sponges, it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a kind of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm … of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of tosh. It is rumble and bumble. It is balder and dash.”
Harding knew he had a winning formula, and he wasn’t going to be pushed into saying something that might screw it up. He won with over sixty percent of the popular vote.
Biden’s Porch
Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware has a lovely front porch. In fact, it has a lovely back porch as well. Biden has a beautiful home in Wilmington, and another beautiful place in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware on the Atlantic. It has porches too.
Joe Biden’s campaign slogan isn’t “Return to Normalcy”. In fact, there isn’t an official slogan for the Biden Campaign yet, but a front-runner is a portion of Biden’s speech announcing his candidacy: “Restore the Soul of America”. That certainly is the modern equivalent of “Return to Normalcy”, and Biden is well aware that the election of 2020 is as much a referendum on Donald Trump, as the election of 1920 was about Woodrow Wilson.
Trump’s Failure
The biggest Trump failure is his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Again and again, the President has acted in ways that serve to increase the severity of disease. Every campaign rally, all the pressure to open schools and the economy, every time the President denigrates the impact of COVID on America, he increases the risk of more illness and death.
So Joe Biden does the opposite. He refuses to have public rallies, warning of the danger of “super spreader” events. He religiously wears a mask, not just because of his age and risk, but because it highlights the President’s cavalier disregard. Biden has laid out plans for a national strategy to combat the epidemic. He knows how to mobilize the nation to respond to the virus. But mostly, he sits back and lets Donald Trump shoot himself in the foot.
Biden knows how to shoot too. He’s found his own foot, sometimes inserted in his own mouth, plenty of times in his fifty plus year political career. But Biden knows that if he literally sits on his porch and lets Trump go, he keeps Trump in the spotlight. And that’s bad for Trump.
Fatigue a Century Later
The voters of 2020 are just as fatigued as the ones a century ago. It’s not all bad news, but our nation has been on a rollercoaster since the contested election of 2000. Then, the Presidency was determined by a 5-4 vote of the Supreme Court. Since then there’s been 9-11, the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, and the first African-American President. We’ve had the Great Recession under Bush, then a gradual recovery under Obama.
We almost elected a woman to the Presidency. But instead, we ended up with a Reality TV Star. We had the great boom under Trump that seemed to impact the stock market, but not the average American. And all of the craziness of the Trump Administration, characterized by the term “governing through chaos”. And now, it’s the pandemic.
Americans are tired of the constant upheaval. They are frustrated with a government that doesn’t seem to work. We are looking to “Restore the Soul of America”. It sounds calming: a “return to normalcy”.
Joe should stay on the porch. It’s his clear path to victory.
