<P> Return to normalcy, a return to the way of life before World War I, was United States presidential candidate Warren G. Harding's campaign slogan for the election of 1920 . Although detractors believed that the word was a neologism as well as a malapropism, coined by Harding (as opposed to the more accepted term normality), there was contemporaneous discussion and evidence found that normalcy had been listed in dictionaries as far back as 1857 . Harding's promise was to return the United States prewar mentality, without the thought of war tainting the minds of the American people . To sum up his points, he stated: </P> <P> "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 ." </P>

Who called for return to normalcy following the war