Harding was the Republican nominee for the election of 1920, partially to be a figurehead president that the Republican party believed they could manipulate, and ran on the idea that he was going to return the nation to normalcy stating in his most famous speech, the return to normalcy (this is the famous excerpt):
"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....”.
Harding ran a very vague and non-specific campaign and neither strongly advocated for anything nor strongly advocated against an idea. However, he still won the election by a landslide, 60% of the popular vote. Republicans were easily able to pass bills with Harding as the president, and as a result they eliminated wartime controls and slashed taxes, established a Federal budget system, restored the high protective tariff, and imposed tight limitations upon immigration. Fortunately for Harding, by 1923 the postwar depression seemed to be giving way to a new surge of prosperity, and as a result, Harding was praised. However, there was scandal in his office. Harding asked the then Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover, for advice, but even with Hoover’s advice, Harding never publicized the scandal for fear of political repercussions. He never found out if or how the scandal would be uncovered for in August of 1923, he died in San Francisco of a heart attack.