A Return to Normalcy?

Mr. Beat spends way too long analyzing the word "normalcy" and President Warren G. Harding's role popularizing it. But did he invent it?

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Normalcy, it seems normal to say that word now, but the word never used to be normally said. In fact, it only recently seems to be more um...normal...to use it in conversation. Check out Google Trends, see that bump in the middle of March, right when the pandemic was beginning to cause lockdowns across the world? “Normalcy” even caught up with “Rickrolling” for a bit. Impressive.

Anyway, we can thank Warren G. Harding, the 29th President of the United States, for first popularizing the word, normalcy. He apparently first used it in a speech in Brooklyn in February 1920, just over 100 years ago. It might have been an accident. After all, Harding was not known to be a good speaker, nor even a very intelligent man. Regardless, he later began using the word more and more as he liked the sound of it, even making it part of his official campaign slogan as he ran for President.

“Normal times and a return to normalcy”

On May 14th, 1920, he gave a well known speech that brought the word into the mainstream. “America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration.” Harding later clarified he didn’t want the country to go back to traditional ways that hindered progress. Rather, he just wanted there to be less chaos and more routine to ease the nation’s anxieties. You see, 1920 was after two years of lots of chaos. World War One had just ended in November 1918, but things remained crazy due to a horrifying pandemic commonly known as the Spanish Flu. It killed anywhere from 50 to 100 million people worldwide, and had a frighteningly high mortality rate for young adults, an age group that normally doesn’t have to worry as much about influenza outbreaks. Not only that, but 1919 saw an increase in race riots, the First Red Scare, and a President who was unable or unwilling to do much about it.

Anyway, so yeah, the country was anxious and yearned for normality, or as Harding called it normalcy. While Harding seemed so proud of himself using that word, his critics most definitely made fun of him for using it.

They mostly said Harding was an idiot because that word didn’t exist, and that indeed he was mixing the word up with “normality.”

One such critic said “The friends of Senator Harding are defending his language now by saying that ‘normalcy’ is a perfectly good word. Well, so is jackasstical, when applied to fantastic verbiage.” Newspaper editors literally changed Harding’s quoted “normalcy” to “normality,” assuming he made an error.

After Harding’s unexpected death in 1923, the historian George N. Clark said “if ‘normalcy’ is ever to become an accepted word it will presumably be because the late President...did not know any better.” Even today, one of the most popular Google searches related to the word is “is normalcy a word?”

#normalcy #warrenharding #presidents