The Politics of Normalcy

...In the present moment, when it is so tempting to draw on the twenties for illustrative analogy to contemporary political phenomena, the book is especially thought-provoking, and serves in a way Murray never intended as a corrective for careless quasi-historical thinking about the deckle of the twenties, and by extension, the seventies...

...What remains to disturb the reader I by Robert K. Murray Norton $6.95 also in paperback $2.65 appears not in the body of the book, but in the author's foreword...

...His concluding chapter on the fulfillment of the normalcy program under Coolidge aptly completes the clear and attractive opening development of normalcy in the early chapters...

...Murray's portrait of Harding is striking for the few parallels with Nixon's presidency, rather than for the many...

...Despite the political strife of his administration, the scandals erupting as he grew ill, Harding's death occasioned a great outpouring of affection in the American people, and he achieved his ambition in death as he could never have done in life...

...In The Politics of Normalcy, Murray has purposed to write a shorter, looser, and more reflective treatment of the Harding era, and has extended his considerations beyond Harding's own administration, so as to evaluate the characteristics of Harding's programs and ideas as they finally matured under Coolidge after Harding's untimely demise...

...It is a happy accident for several reasons: accident, of course, because the work was in progress long before the revelations of Watergate, and fortunate because Murray has established himself as perhaps the foremost scholar on the first American decade after the Great War of 1914--1918, and is consequently a man who can write with real authority on an era that somehow became famous (infamous...

...Clor has altered the terms of a perennial debate...

...All too often conservative thought on obscenity is caricatured as prudish and philistine at best, or intolerant and fascistic at worst...

...Would a society of '~pure" freedom and "self-interest" be a blissful utopia of peaceful exchange or a Hobbesian jungle of incipient civil war...

...These reservations aside, Murray has undeniably extended his thoughts beyond the point he had reached in the more detailed and narrative biography, and in many respects has done a fine job...

...Murray's sustained insistence that he is leading the field in Harding scholarship is less appropriate in his own foreword than it would be in the words of another writer, though perhaps it seems necessary to him when within the space of several years a number of major books on Harding have appeared...

...Thomas Etzold 22 The Alternative February 1974...

...It was a highly successful effort, and one may wonder why Murray has followed it up so soon with another book so nearly on the same subject...

...Disagreement forestailed the resolution to problems while compromise enhanced it...

...These are very plausible propositions...

...More charmingly, though not perhaps more modestly, he hoped above all to be the best loved American president...

...The book itself is engaging, quick-paced, fluently if not elegantly written, informative as well as analytic a l - i n short, just the kind of book that one might want to give to his undergraduates to read (which is exactly what Murray and the Norton company undoubtedly have in mind...

...He suggests, for example, that obsession with sensual gratification can weaken the "higher faculties" essential to "self-control and social responsibility" and lead to a self-centered withdrawal of energy from crucial public concerns...

...But mere historical eviden~ drawn, perhaps, from contemporary Sweden and Denmark-might have bu~qxessed an already powerful case...

...Because he knew his own limitations, Harding never aspired to be the best president the country had ever had, nor even one of the great...

...And who in the end would really want to live there...

...One can only hope that Murray, whose knowledge of his era is peerless, will fill this lacuna in coming years...

...The implications of governmental growth during the war, the new functions assumed and retained, the expansion of federal service and its transformation into a modern bureaucracy --no account of governmental practice in the 1920s can be complete without assessing these developments...

...Harding was affable, gregarious, friendly, and generous...

...It is likewise unfortunate that Murray's promises of deeply reflective rethinking and new analytical excursions, made in the foreword, seem exaggerated after the book has been read...

...Meanwhile Murray has opportunely provided a brief summary of Harding's personality, mind, intentions, and presidency...

...But if I think of myself only, what kind of man am I? Readers of Clor's book might well add: If we the people incessantly think of ourselves only, what kind of society will we have...

...without becoming well or truly known...

...And surely Clor in one incisive book has done enough...

...Fresh from long researches in the Harding papers and associated collections, he sought to eradicate a number of the myths grown up around the Harding presidency and to extend materially the body of knowledge concerning Harding's political ideas, economic policies, and his work in politics...

...In The Politics of Normalcy, Murray has written much that is useful, only a little that is less good...

...As a wise saying in the Talmud observes: if I do net think of myself, no one else will...

...Humble, Harding felt it necessary to rely on and to consult with the '~)est minds" of his party, for in his view, the president was not the embodiment of the mystical will of the people, nor even the foremost leader of his own partv...

...It is not that his arguments are weak...

...He has written an excellent reaffirmation of traditional conservative doctrines and a forceful critique of philosephical permissiveness...

...Amid talk of corruption in high places, with great expo~s the daily fare of American citizens, people are searching their vague memories of the past~for comparisons and precedents which provide insights or guides to the confusion of the moment...

...0nly four years ago, Murray published his voluminous biography of Harding...

...Harding's desire deserves respect and refiection, for it permits assessment not only of how far the nation and the presidency have come in aspiration and in fact, but of how great the loss when gentle hnr~nlty, modesty, and conciliatory spirit are no more found in the nation's high oi~ces...

...How "open" can a society become before it ceases to be a civilized society at all...

...Can a good and livable civilization be built on the principle of deliberate indifference to our fellow human beings...

...In a happy accident, Robert K. Murray has published his second book on the Harding era...

...But much that deserved deep thought and analysis in the problems of government in the Harding era are untouched in this volume...

...Harding's presidential idol was William McKinley, and he was suspicious of presidential power and reluctant to exercise it...

...Murray remarks that loyalty ranked high in Harding's values, and quotes one of Harding's acquaintances: "He liked politicians for the reason that he loved dogs, because they were usually loyal to their friends...

...And in the process he has raised questions that transcend the single issue of indecent literature...

...Yet no author can do everything...

...He disliked contention and crisis, and "regarded compromise and conciliation as superior to argument and disagreement...

...George Nash I In the era of Watergate, no comparisons in American history come more readily to mind than those taken from the Harding era...

...Although his ambition belongs to a time gone by, to an age more innocent, simpler than our own, in the swirling disputes and contentions of the seventies, Harding's naive aim should evoke more than the cynicism, much more than the derision and contempt with which, as Murray notes, Harding and his era have for the most part been treated by historians...

...they are not...