Warren G. Harding's Return To Normalcy

The promises that Warren G. Harding had made in his speech, Return to Normalcy, were never fulfilled for the American people. The accumulation of racial hatred remained at a high throughout most of Harding’s presidency and nothing was changed concerning the status of the KKK. The international agenda of America did recede after the war, however, other countries still turned to America in their times of debt. Harding was not able to return to a policy of Isolationism, and therefore, he placed the country within the center fold of the other allied nations. Harding also remained ignorant to the corrupt actions of his cabinet members during his presidency. Thus, he ignored his promise to avoid further agitation within the United States and solidified this time period as a period of false change. During the reformations Post WWI, Warren G. Harding was not able to maintain his promise seen through his failure to subdue racial tension, his struggle to recede out of international politics, and his embarrassment surrounding the corruption of his presidency. The first promise Harding failed to keep was the vow to remove agitation within the recovering country. However, even after World War 1, agitation still existed in many forms through the Ku Klux Klan and the President’s corrupt cabinet. During the War, there were little restrictions within the country allowing racial groups such as the KKK to ascend back into power. They began to terrorize the different ethnic groups within the country and influenced harsher immigration laws. Intolerance

Harding’s presidency during the 1920’s was filled with nothing but corruption, political schemes, and broken promises. The resolutions that he had made during his campaign never came to fruition and he ended up dying before the truth of his failure came to light. There was no true return to normalcy and many of the post-war policies stayed intact for the latter part of the decade until the start of the Second World