“America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy.”
As president, Harding delivered two Annual Messages to Congress — the addresses we now call the State of the Union — on December 6, 1921, and December 8, 1922. They survey a nation emerging from war: the rights of labor and capital, tariffs and taxation, the merchant marine, and Harding's wary stance toward foreign entanglements. Collected today as State of the Union Addresses by Warren G. Harding, they are a clear window into the policy mind of the "normalcy" presidency.
Hearing them in Harding's own voice changes the experience entirely. These were public arguments meant for the ear, delivered by the first president the nation could literally hear — and the restored voice returns that oratory to the medium it was made for.
Warren Gamaliel Harding (1865–1923) was the 29th President of the United States and, before that, an Ohio newspaper publisher who built the Marion Star into a thriving daily. Campaigning in 1920 on a promised "return to normalcy" after World War I, he won in a landslide and brought a publisher's instinct for the spoken and broadcast word into the White House.
Harding was a president of media firsts: the first to have his voice carried by radio, the first to install a radio set in the White House, and an enthusiastic user of the phonograph, recording speeches on wax for the Nation's Forum series. His term was cut short by his sudden death in August 1923, but his voice — captured on early recordings and on the air — outlived him.
This is a restored voice edition. Harding's voice genuinely survives: he recorded speeches on wax phonograph discs (including the Nation's Forum series) and was the first U.S. president whose address was broadcast by radio, in 1922. Those authentic recordings are the basis for reconstructing how Harding sounded; the audio you hear is built from his real archival voice, not a claim that the president is speaking today.
Provenance: Restored from real recordings. We label every voice honestly — restored, narrated, or disputed.
Harding had a resonant, deliberate orator's delivery suited to the large halls of his day. Real recordings survive on early phonograph discs and from his pioneering radio broadcasts, preserving the actual sound of his speech.
Yes, it is a restoration grounded in his genuine recordings. Harding recorded speeches for the phonograph and was the first president broadcast on the radio, so authentic source audio of him exists to reconstruct from.
Yes. As works of a U.S. president delivered to Congress, his Annual Messages are in the public domain and are collected in editions available through Project Gutenberg.
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