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."

Sanders. Warren. No.

There will be no progressive revival in 2020.

Let me repeat that - there will be no progressive revival in 2020!

Which means that neither Bernie Sanders nor Elizabeth Warren will be President.

Deal with it.

And why do I say all of this? Because now is not the time for a progressive revival.  As someone who in 2016 did in fact support a Democratic presidential candidate who ran to the left of the eventual Democratic nominee (though Martin O'Malley was not liberal enough to satisfy Bernie bros), I don't like to admit this, but the simple fact is this. In 2016, after eight years of Barack Obama's accomplishments, we were in a moment to move forward and go farther under a more liberal Chief Executive, but that moment has long since passed.  Because in 2016, Democrats played it safe with a centrist nominee in Hillary Clinton, and Trump, who promised sweeping change - ironically, a selling point for Sanders' own 2016 campaign - won the Presidency.  Since then, Trump has not only erased Obama's accomplishments, he's violated all of the norms that existed in Washington long before Obama came along.  In short, Trump has taken the country too far back from where we were in 2016 for us to simply pick up where we left off then.

Even if we were in a position to go far left at this time, we're too exhausted by Trump's governance to move ahead.  Now more than ever, we need moderation.  Universal medical insurance and taxing the rich will have to wait, as well several other progressive pipedreams - even modernizing Amtrak, a pet policy of Joe Biden (and myself).  We need to get back to where we were in 2016 before we can move on to the bigger, better and greater things Sanders and Warren talk about, and it will take at least four years for us to get back to where we were.  And it won't be easy.  

The Presidency, you might recall, changed parties in 1920, from Democrat Woodrow Wilson to Republican Warren Harding, after a tumultuous period that left Americans exhausted (which included a world war).  "Back to normalcy" was the winning slogan in 1920, and it's going to be the winning slogan in 2020.  

As for Bernie and Liz, well, they'll at least still have their Senate seats.

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.