A Craving for Normalcy Spells the End of a Populist Presidency

October 4, 2020

Source: Link

By Niall Ferguson (original source Bloomberg)

America’s present need,” the candidate declared, “is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy … My best judgment of America’s need is to steady down, to get squarely on our feet, to make sure of the right path. Let’s get out of the fevered delirium.”

The candidate was the Republican Warren G. Harding and the date was May 14, 1920. Six months later, Harding won a landslide victory over the Democratic nominee, James M. Cox, winning 60% of the popular vote and 404 Electoral College votes.

A return to normalcy: It’s an appealing prospect today, too, amid an ongoing pandemic, in the wake of an unprecedented economic shock, and after four years of political disruption. A century ago, to be sure, Americans had come through worse: the 1918-19 Spanish influenza, which killed around 675,000 people (the equivalent of 2.2 million today), and World War I.

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