Why is President Barack Obama quoting Warren G. Harding?

Harding, to put it gently, isn’t one of America’s most revered presidents. The Ohio Republican, who served from 1921 until his death in 1923, is often remembered for corruption among his appointees and accusations of adultery. Harding also will forever be associated with a phrase he used as a campaign slogan: “return to normalcy.”

Obama used that phrase Monday in his speech to Wall Street calling for the financial industry to support rather than try to block his various proposals for increased regulation. Speaking of his administration’s economic stabilization efforts so far, including the $787 billion stimulus and involvement with bailouts, and the credit and housing markets, Obama said, “The growing stability resulting from these interventions means we're beginning to return to normalcy. But here's what I want to emphasize today: Normalcy cannot lead to complacency.”

Harding actually had used the phrase to argue against government activism and intervention. “The world needs to be reminded that all human ills are not curable by legislation, and that quantity of statutory enactment and excess of government offer no substitute for quality of citizenship,” he said in his May 1920 “Return to Normalcy” speech in Boston.

Did Obama and his speechwriters mean to channel Harding, or did the phrase just sound right?

Martin Medhurst, a Baylor University political scientist who specializes in rhetoric and communication, said he figured “whoever though of it wasn’t aware of the rhetorical history.” If Obama was trying to subtly signal to Republicans that he wants to be bipartisan (Harding was a Republican), or signal to Wall Street that he doesn’t want overregulation, Medhurst said, “there’s ways to say it without using that phraseology.” Harding, Medhurst said, “almost always ends up in the bottom” of presidential rankings. “Pierce and Buchanan and Nixon and Harding are usually the bottom four.”