Non-fiction: Acceptance Speech (Republican National Convention)

Overview
Warren G. Harding’s 1920 Republican National Convention acceptance speech, delivered from his front porch in Marion, Ohio, framed the postwar moment as a weary nation’s need for steadiness and restraint. He accepted the nomination by pledging a “return to normalcy,” an arresting phrase that condensed his broader promise: not heroics but healing, not experiment but restoration, and a renewed fidelity to constitutional governance after the strains of World War I, wartime mobilization, and the fevered conflicts of the Progressive era. He cast himself as a restorer rather than a crusader, promising dependable institutions, sober administration, and a government scaled back to familiar American limits.

Domestic Program
Harding criticized the centralization and emergency powers of the Wilson years and vowed to re-anchor federal authority in the Constitution and Congress. He promised economy in administration, a balanced budget, reduced taxation, and systematic budgeting, proposals that anticipated the creation of a modern executive budget process. He argued for a protective tariff to stabilize agriculture and industry in a turbulent global economy, repudiating both laissez-faire neglect and perpetual wartime regimentation. He supported law enforcement, including the enforcement of Prohibition as mandated by the Constitution, and called for respect for courts and the rule of law as the framework for social order.

On social policy and civic life, he affirmed public education, public health, and Americanization as unifying national aims. He welcomed the imminent enfranchisement of women, signaling inclusion within constitutional channels rather than social upheaval. He rejected class government and warned against radicalism and violence, seeking industrial peace through cooperation and fair dealing instead of coercion by either capital or labor. The tone was conciliatory yet firm: labor had rights and responsibilities; business required stability and honesty; government must be efficient, frugal, and faithful to the people rather than experimental or autocratic.

Foreign Policy and the League
Harding’s most pointed foreign policy argument addressed the League of Nations. He denounced the Covenant as compromising American sovereignty and constitutional prerogatives, particularly the Senate’s role in treaties and the nation’s freedom to decide questions of war and peace. Yet he did not preach isolation. He proposed an “association of nations” built on cooperation, mutual counsel, and moral commitments rather than automatic military obligations. Peace, he insisted, would be better secured through independent American strength, frank diplomacy, and voluntary agreements, including the possibility of conferences to reduce armaments and foster stability. The United States, he argued, should be a sympathetic but sovereign participant in world affairs.

Tone and Rhetoric
The speech’s cadence helped define its message: “not nostrums but normalcy; not revolution but restoration; not agitation but adjustment; not submergence in internationality but sustainment in triumphant nationality.” This antithesis-driven rhetoric paired healing with prudence and framed Harding as the guardian of a national house in need of repair rather than redesign. The diction favored reassurance over alarm, continuity over rupture, and practical governance over visionary crusades.

Significance
Harding’s acceptance address distilled the 1920 election into a referendum on postwar readjustment. It set the intellectual and emotional tone for a landslide victory by promising relief from inflation, unrest, and international entanglement while preserving America’s capacity to lead by example and agreement. The themes foreshadowed the early 1920s agenda: budget reform, tariff protection, restriction of emergency bureaucracy, respect for constitutional processes, and a cautious but engaged foreign posture. Above all, the speech captured a public appetite for stability, an appeal that made “normalcy” one of the era’s defining political watchwords.