Editing Warren G. Harding (section)

===Primary campaign===
[[File:Sen. Warren S. (G.) Harding LCCN2016819939 (cropped).jpg|thumb|right|Harding {{circa}} 1919]]
With most Progressives having rejoined the Republican Party, their former leader, Theodore Roosevelt, was deemed likely to make a third run for the White House in 1920, and was the overwhelming favorite for the Republican nomination. These plans ended when Roosevelt suddenly died on January 6, 1919. A number of candidates quickly emerged, including General [[Leonard Wood]], Illinois Governor [[Frank Lowden]], California Senator [[Hiram Johnson]], and a host of relatively minor possibilities such as [[Herbert Hoover]] (renowned for his World War I relief work), Massachusetts Governor [[Calvin Coolidge]], and General [[John J. Pershing]].{{sfn|Trani & Wilson|p=21}}

Harding, while he wanted to be president, was as much motivated in entering the race by his desire to keep control of Ohio Republican politics, enabling his re-election to the Senate in 1920. Among those coveting Harding's seat were former governor Willis (he had been defeated by [[James M. Cox]] in 1916) and Colonel [[William Cooper Procter]] (head of [[Procter & Gamble]]). On December 17, 1919, Harding made a low-key announcement of his presidential candidacy.{{sfn|Dean|pp=49–51}} Leading Republicans disliked Wood and Johnson, both of the progressive faction of the party, and Lowden, who had an independent streak, was deemed little better. Harding was far more acceptable to the "Old Guard" leaders of the party.{{sfn|Trani & Wilson|pp=659–660}}

Daugherty, who became Harding's campaign manager, was sure none of the other candidates could garner a majority. His strategy was to make Harding an acceptable choice to delegates once the leaders faltered. Daugherty established a "Harding for President" campaign office in Washington (run by his confidant, [[Jess Smith]]), and worked to manage a network of Harding friends and supporters, including [[Frank Scobey]] of Texas (clerk of the Ohio State Senate during Harding's years there).{{sfn|Murray 1969|pp=26–27}} Harding worked to shore up his support through incessant letter-writing. Despite the candidate's work, according to Russell, "without Daugherty's [[Mephistopheles|Mephistophelean]] efforts, Harding would never have stumbled forward to the nomination."{{sfn|Russell|pp=336–339}}

{{quote box | align = right | width = 26em | salign = right
| quote = America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.
| source =Warren G. Harding, speech before the Home Market Club, Boston, May 14, 1920{{sfn|Dean|p=56}}}}

There were only 16 presidential primary states in 1920, of which the most crucial to Harding was Ohio. Harding had to have some loyalists at the convention to have any chance of nomination, and the Wood campaign hoped to knock Harding out of the race by taking Ohio. Wood campaigned in the state, and his supporter, Procter, spent large sums; Harding spoke in the non-confrontational style he had adopted in 1914. Harding and Daugherty were so confident of sweeping Ohio's 48 delegates that the candidate went on to the next state, Indiana, before the April 27 Ohio primary.{{sfn|Dean|pp=55–56}} Harding carried Ohio by only 15,000 votes over Wood, taking less than half the total vote, and won only 39 of 48 delegates. In Indiana, Harding finished fourth, with less than ten percent of the vote, and failed to win a single delegate. He was willing to give up and have Daugherty file his re-election papers for the Senate, but Florence Harding grabbed the phone from his hand, "Warren Harding, what are you doing? Give up? Not until the convention is over. Think of your friends in Ohio!"{{sfn|Russell|pp=346–347}} On learning that Daugherty had left the phone line, the future First Lady retorted, "Well, you tell Harry Daugherty for me that we're in this fight until Hell freezes over."{{sfn|Dean|p=56}}

After he recovered from the shock of the poor results, Harding traveled to Boston, where he delivered a speech that according to Dean, "would resonate throughout the 1920 campaign and history."{{sfn|Dean|p=56}} There, he said that "America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy;{{efn|Although Harding did not invent the word "normalcy", he is credited with popularizing it. See {{harvnb|Russell|p=347}}. The other word that Harding popularized was [[bloviation|bloviate]], which he said was a somewhat-obsolete term used in Ohio meaning to sit around and talk. After Harding's resurrection of it, it came to mean empty oratory. See {{harvnb|Dean|p=37}}.}} not revolution, but restoration."{{sfn|Russell|p=347}} Dean notes, "Harding, more than the other aspirants, was reading the nation's pulse correctly."{{sfn|Dean|p=56}}