Impromptus today is a variety show, as usual. I begin with presidential lying (a very touchy subject). Then, QAnon (maybe touchier). Then Susan Collins (touchy), Mitt Romney (touchier), Venezuela (tragic), etc. Toward the end, I have some remembrances — of Phyllis George, Richard Fenno, and Stiller & Meara. Finally, there is a little photo gallery, showing springtime in New York.
I do not leave out language. Let me excerpt a couple of paragraphs from my column:
On Twitter, I have been doing a little language thread. A reader tweeted, “Jay, I’m curious what you think of ‘normalcy’ (as used by so many recently who want to return to normality).”
As it happens, we have an anniversary — a centennial: Warren G. Harding popularized the word “normalcy” in the 1920 presidential campaign. He said that, after eight years of Wilson, after the World War and so much upheaval, we Americans needed “not nostrums, but normalcy.”
Let’s see Harding’s fuller statement, shall we? This year, Joe Biden could use all of it — until the end:
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.
Ha — triumphant nationality is Trump’s gig!