Collection: Selected Campaign Speeches (1920)

Overview
"Selected Campaign Speeches (1920)" gathers Warren G. Harding’s principal addresses from his front-porch presidential run, presenting a coherent case for national stabilization after the upheavals of war and reform. The collection moves from his nomination acceptance through targeted appeals to farmers, labor, business, veterans, and newly enfranchised women, hammering home the watchword of the campaign: a return to "normalcy". Taken together, the speeches outline a governing temperament, cautious, conciliatory, and institutional, more than a slate of sweeping new programs. Harding frames the election as a referendum on the Wilson era’s internationalism and executive assertiveness, offering steadiness, constitutional regularity, and economic predictability in their place.

Historical Context
The addresses are set against post–World War I dislocation: inflation, strikes, demobilization, the Red Scare, and the Senate’s rejection of the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations as proposed by President Wilson. Harding leverages public fatigue with crisis governance, speaking to voters wary of ideological crusades abroad and administrative overreach at home. The ratification of the 19th Amendment enlarges the electorate in real time, and the speeches acknowledge women’s civic authority and the social questions newly in focus. The result is a campaign voice attuned to restoration without regression, promising healing after strain.

Core Themes
Normalcy is the banner under which Harding arranges his themes: constitutional balance, congressional primacy, and a re-centering of party government. He repeatedly pledges "not heroics but healing", distancing himself from messianic leadership and recommitting to process and prudence. On foreign affairs, he rejects the League of Nations covenant while endorsing an "association of nations", cooperation without surrender of sovereignty, peace through conference, and practical disarmament. Economically, he argues for thrift in government, a formal budget system, tax simplification, and protective tariffs to shelter American industry and agriculture from postwar shocks. Labor receives respectful recognition of the right to organize and bargain, coupled with firm opposition to violence and industrial coercion from any side. Immigration and "Americanization" appear as calls for assimilation and loyalty amid fears of radicalism. Veterans’ claims, farm price instability, and infrastructure needs round out a pragmatic domestic portfolio.

Rhetoric and Strategy
The collection showcases the rhythms of the front-porch campaign: set-piece addresses to delegations, calibrated to audience and delivered in an idiom that blends homily with policy sketch. Harding’s style relies on aphoristic contrasts, statesmanship over partisanship, cooperation over coercion, steadiness over spectacle. Repetition is used to assure rather than inflame, and the moral vocabulary of duty, honor, and responsibility substitutes for programmatic elaboration. The method itself, rooted in Marion rather than barnstorming cross-country, reinforces the image of composure he is selling.

Policy Sketches
While light on administrative detail, the speeches commit to concrete directions. A national budget and executive reorganization would discipline expenditures and clarify accountability. Tariff revision would protect wages and stabilize farm incomes; a merchant marine and open markets would expand trade under American control. Labor policy would pursue arbitration, the eight-hour standard where established, and fair wages, paired with an insistence on law and order. On foreign policy, an American-led conference system and separate peace settlements would secure stability without entangling guarantees. Public works, roads, and communication improvements are proposed as shared endeavors between government and enterprise, not as permanent federal regimentation.

Significance
Read as a set, the speeches explain Harding’s landslide more than they celebrate it. They translate diffuse voter yearnings, peace, predictability, constitutional normalcy, into a governing mood. The collection also foreshadows early achievements and choices of the Harding administration: the Budget and Accounting Act, tariff restoration, veterans’ relief, and the Washington Naval Conference reflect the campaign’s promises of fiscal order and cautious international cooperation. The cadence is restorative rather than visionary, but its appeal lies precisely in that restraint, an argument that the republic’s recovery depends less on novelty than on a reliable return to tested forms.