I Want Normalcy

As in 1920, Americans in 2020 want a return to normalcy after the coronavirus pandemic, assuming it ever ends.  A lot of people have a problem with that attitude, because, in their view, normalcy means income inequality, health care inequities, pollution, and overdevelopment.

Well, that's not my idea of normalcy, and that's not the idea of normalcy among people who are quite vocal about wanting to return to it.  For us, normalcy is simply being able to go to a supermarket without looking like a bank robber or a ninja warrior.  It means when, you do go in to a bank, you can walk into the lobby and not have to use the uncivilized drive-in window.  It means going once again to art museums and libraries, which have been closed for being "non-essential" enterprises.  It means going to a party and being able to mingle freely with your fellow guests.  It pains me to know that my model friend Nancy Donahue and my hairdresser friend Harry King won't be able to have their fashion reunion party any time soon because of this damn virus because their parties have a lot of what I activities that social distancing and personal protection apparel render impossible - lots of hugging, lots of kissing, lots of beautiful faces, and, for me anyway, having a diet soft drink at the bar without having to worry about catching a disease.  What's so bad about that sort of normalcy?

You know, when Warren G. Harding promised a return to normalcy, he wasn't necessarily saying we should go back to horse-and-buggy transportation or manually gaslit streetlights or anything like that.  Harding was in fact fascinated with the new technology coming out of the post-World-War-I era, such as radio and motion pictures, and he even went on a camping trip with captains of industry to show how safe automobiles were.  He simply wanted a return to Americans living their lives in the relative peace and safety that preceded the war.  He wanted to get the economy up and running again and he wanted economic activity to absorb new technology with ease, which is why he appointed bureaucratic wizard Herbert Hoover as Secretary of Commerce.  Perhaps Harding's greatest contribution to the United States was that he helped create a new norm that Americans would come to enjoy, a norm that included road trips, movie dates, and Louis Armstrong.  As for the charge against Harding that "normalcy" meant isolationism and wanting nothing to do with the outside world, even that is misplaced. The U.S., despite its failure to join the League of Nations, hosted an international naval disarmament conference in 1921.  President Calvin Coolidge, Harding's successor, continued American responsibility as a global leader with aid to victims of the 1923 earthquake in Japan and later promoted the Kellogg-Briand Pact, a 1928 treaty negotiated by Frank Kellogg, Coolidge's Secretary of State, and French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand, to (unsuccessfully, of course) try to prevent another global war.  (One effort at promoting normalcy in the 1920s - Prohibition - was in fact an abnormal condition, and also a resounding failure.) 

What would be wrong with a "normalcy" that would allow Americans to breathe freely - literally? And what's wrong with a "normalcy" that does not include Donald J. Trump?

Americans in 2020 just want to return to the simple pleasures of life that existed before this damn virus struck.  To quote the title character from the 1980 movie Private Benjamin, "I want to wear my sandals, I want to go out to lunch, I want to be normal again."

From The Front Porch

Joe Biden can't leave his house in Wilmington, Delaware while the nation is under lockdown because of the coronavirus, and he's thus confined to his basement TV studio putting out announcements that his detractors (including many Bernie bros, who literally hate him) have compared to a public-access show like "Wayne's World."  Trump's "disinjectant" manifesto has caused Trump himself to appear on TV less often, so Biden's problem isn't that serious right now.  But eventually, as the 2020 presidential campaign picks up steam, Biden is going to have to up his game, and there's still no indication that travel and economic restrictions are going to be eased even temporarily over the summer and early autumn before the second wave of the virus hits.  Biden's digital campaign is still a work in progress while Trump has been building up his for over three years.  So what's a Democratic presidential nominee who can expect nonstop ridicule from Trump and Fox News personalities supposed to do to reach the people?

How about, for 2020, a parlor trick from 1920?  How about a front-porch campaign?

In 1920, a year scarily like this one - a recession, a pandemic, a great deal of uncertainty - the Republican presidential candidate, U.S. Senator Warren G. Harding of Ohio, campaigned from his home in the small Ohio town of Marion while his Democratic opponent - the governor of Ohio, James M. Cox - toured the country.  As the country was just coming out of a Spanish-flu pandemic, this was a smart idea; Harding didn't have to risk getting sick, and he was much more comfortable greeting guests and supporters (who, I'm sure, were well-screened) coming to see him.

Joe Biden could do the same thing.  He could campaign outside his house and have people (and the media) come to see him in the flesh.  You wouldn't have a packed audience on his front yard like Harding, as shown above, was able to have, as the Spanish-flu pandemic was already easing by the fall of 1920.  Just bring enough people who could fit in front of Biden's house with six feet of space between them - and no masks, because you don't want the audience to look like a convention of gangsters.  Just figure out how to keep everyone six feet away from each other at all times.

The first front-porch campaign was actually waged in 1896 by another Ohio Republican, William McKinley, in response to his Democratic opponent William Jennings Bryan's campaign tour.  (The idea of a presidential nominee going on a campaign tour was a novel idea back then.)  McKinley, who ultimately won the 1896 election, knew that Bryan was a much better orator than he was, and he had no interest in taking Bryan's bait and competing on Bryan's terms when he preferred not to engage in any language he considered too flowery and empty. "I might as well put up a trapeze on my front lawn and compete against some professional athlete as go out speaking against Bryan," McKinley said. "I have to think when I speak."  Harding, though, employed the front-porch strategy for more cynical reasons.  Once he was the 1920 Republican presidential nominee, Republican U.S. Senator Boies Penrose of Pennsylvania offered the following advice to Harding's handlers: "Keep Warren at home.  Don't let him make any speeches.  If he goes out on a tour somebody's sure to ask him questions, and Warren's just the sort of damned fool who'll try to answer them."  Harding defeated Cox in a landslide.  

I am not cynically suggesting a front-porch campaign for Biden to save him from himself.  No matter what public stage you put Biden on, he's still liable to say something and not have it come out right.   That can't be changed.  But with a front-porch campaign, at least you literally get him out of the house.

And if Biden's house doesn't have a front porch, someone had best build one.

(Incidentally, James Cox's vice presidential running mate - a fellow you probably never heard of, Franklin D. Roosevelt - also toured the country in the 1920 campaign, knowing the Democratic ticket wouldn't win but knowing also that he, then 38 years old, could build up a lot of political capital for his own future. Roosevelt had overcome the Spanish flu a year earlier; he became infected with polio in 1921.  I'm no medical expert, but I wouldn't be surprised if the flu compromised his immune system and made him more susceptible to catching the polio virus.  As for Harding, who never caught the Spanish flu, he had heart trouble that the pressure of the Presidency exacerbated, leading to his death in office in 1923 at the age of 57.  None of this has anything to do with Biden; this is just a bit of historical context.)     

The Worst Birthday Present

What was the best gift you ever received for your birthday?

What could be the best possible gift you can get?

How about the Presidency of the United States?

While it may seem statistically impossible for anyone to be elected President on one's birthday, it's already happened once . . . to this fellow.

Warren G. Harding, born on this day in 1865, was the Republican candidate for President in 1920, which was also the year women got the vote. After eight years of Woodrow Wilson's government expansion and vigorous foreign policy, the latter of which brought the United States in World War I, Harding and the Republicans campaigned on a platform of laissez-faire economics and a return to relative global isolation that would restore "normalcy," whatever that was. Americans were drained by Wilson's activism (ironically, so was Wilson, sadly felled by a stroke in 1919) and happily elected Harding to succeed him, endorsing him over Democratic candidate James Cox by a plurality of seven million votes.

Election Day in 1920 fell on November 2. It was Harding's fifty-fifth birthday.

As you can tell by the scowl in the picture above, Harding got a present he would have happily brought back to the dry goods store. He wanted to remain in the U.S. Senate, where he represented Ohio, but party leaders pushed him to accept the presidential nomination because of his electability. Harding had a bad heart, and his father and brother - both doctors - predicted he wouldn't live through a full term. Sadly, they were right. The pressures of the Presidency proved too much for Harding, and he died in August 1923.

The following year, administration scandals that Harding had known nothing about surfaced, and the idea of American "normalcy" was kaput.