The Jazz Age President by Ryan S. Walters

Author:Ryan S. Walters
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regnery History
Published: 2022-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7 PUTTING AMERICA FIRST

“I think it’s an inspiration to patriotic devotion to safeguard America first, to stabilize America first, to prosper America first, to think of America first, to exalt America first, to live for and revere America first.”

—Warren Harding

With the awful events of 1919 and the economic depression of 1920–21, Americans turned inward, wanting to concentrate on the problems plaguing their own nation rather than those of Europe, and they liked the man from Marion and his pledge to “return to normalcy,” which was as much about putting America and Americans first as anything else. As a Republican, and like many conservatives within the GOP, Harding passionately believed that the first priority of government was at home, not in some faraway land. The prevailing idea of a great many national Republican politicians at the time was to put the country above any personal or partisan causes. Wilsonian Democrats had shown themselves to be the party of social meddling, foreign crusades, and global markets, and that had given the Republicans a huge advantage in the 1920 election. As Robert Murray has written, no other phrase, “with the exception of ‘return to normalcy,’ was as descriptive of or as appealing to the Harding administration” as “America First.”1

For Warren Harding, “America First” was not, as his many detractors claim, some catchy slogan conjured up by his handlers to help propel him to the White House in 1920; it was a deeply held principle that he expressed throughout his career, including at the 1916 Republican convention four years before. At that time, as the European war raged into its third year and President Wilson was gearing up to run for a second term, the Republicans had met in their national convention in Chicago to pick a candidate who could retake the White House, which they had held for forty-four out of the previous fifty-six years. Republicans had controlled the presidency for such a lengthy period that it had almost come to be seen as the party’s birthright. The “Grand Old Party” had had a lock on the White House and much of Congress nearly continuously since the election of Lincoln in 1860.

As the 1916 Republican convention gaveled in on June 7, the assembled delegates first had to choose a convention chairman. And the overwhelming choice was Senator Harding. In his lengthy address to the convention upon his selection as chairman, Harding spelled out the long-held principles of the Republican Party, summed up in the slogan “America First.” Ironically, Wilson would run his campaign under that banner, along with his memorable slogan of “He Kept Us Out of War.” But the true believers in “America First” were Republicans. “We believe in American markets for American products,” Harding told the delegation, “American wages for American workmen, American opportunity for American genius and industry, and American defense for American soil.”2 Senator Chauncey Depew of New York pronounced Harding’s address “a very acceptable keynote speech. His fine appearance, his fairness, justice and good temper as presiding officer captured the convention.

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