Looking for Normal
Thirteen years ago, I gave the commencement address at my son’s high school. I told the graduates something none of them had considered: theirs was the first class in American history to go through every year of school while the nation was engaged in active military combat. Given that experience, a country perpetually at war might seem normal to them. I told them it was not.
With the continuing convulsions in our politics and culture, what is “normal” anymore? Merriam-Webster offers several definitions, including “conforming to a type, standard, or regular pattern” and “according with, constituting, or not deviating from a norm, rule, or principle.” Notice the two different ideas. One definition describes what is usual. The other describes what is right. Sometimes a practice fits both definitions, sometimes not.
In a time of rapid cultural change, suggesting there are principled standards for normalcy may be met in some quarters with condescension and eye-rolls. Yet the instinct for this kind of normalcy keeps reasserting itself. When activists insisted that high school boys who think they are girls be admitted to girls’ locker rooms, millions of ordinary Americans reacted with the same three words: That’s not normal.
The instinct resurfaced this month when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the firing-squad execution of Fort Hood terrorist Nidal Hasan would be livestreamed. The announcement renewed debate over the death penalty, but it was the livestream that drew the most intense reaction. Some greeted the news with a bloodlust that extended to planning “watch parties.” A broad cross-section of Americans, however, recoiled, sensing that the proposal just wasn’t normal. It was a relief when President Trump overruled his defense chief’s macabre plan.
This desire for normalcy is a driver in our politics and may impact the upcoming midterm election. While Trump scored big early in his second term with securing the border and keeping tax rates low, the Iran war, higher energy prices and unforced errors like Hegseth’s threaten to obscure those achievements. As a consequence, as with nearly every even-year election since 2010, there is potential for yet another swing of the pendulum. If that happens, what message will voters, particularly those in the middle who determine the outcome, be sending?
Consider the record. In 2010, they reacted against President Obama upending the health care system. Border chaos shaped 2014’s result. In 2016, voters rejected a quarter-century of Clinton scandals, from cattle futures to Benghazi to Clinton Global Initiative grift to the private basement email server and its 33,000 deleted emails. The 2018 result followed the two-year Russia hoax, a deep-state-driven investigation and propaganda campaign that convinced many middle-of-the-road voters that Trump had colluded with Moscow. In 2020, voters chose “sleepy Joe” over the White House’s hyperbolic drama. And 2024 delivered a resounding no to the enablers who let the country be run by a foggy president who opened the border, then replaced him at the last minute with the word-salad candidate. Each time, voters abandoned the side that seemed to be pulling the country away from normal.
Should Democrats make gains in Congress, it will be largely because of Trump’s decision to go to war in Iran. That being the case, Democrats should not mistake any gains they make for a mandate to expand the Supreme Court, abolish the filibuster, advocate for letting boys compete on girls’ sports teams, abandon Israel, or impose nationwide abortion on demand up through birth. They should instead pursue what every-day Americans want fixed: ending inflation and avoiding intractable military conflicts. That is unlikely, as it was the Democrats’ extravagant spending spree in 2021-2022 that started the current inflationary fire and there is zero indication that they have converted to the idea of spending restraint.
Voters who swing the pendulum are not fickle. Election after election, they have been looking for what should be considered normal: govern within the bounds of principle, fix the problems in front of us, and leave the foundations alone. Whichever party holds power in January would do well to respond to that. And regardless of how the dust settles, conservatives need to begin charting a course back to the normalcy the Founders envisioned, grounded in the Declaration of Independence’s principles and the Constitution’s limited government framework.
*Congressman Keith Rothfus served 3 terms in the U.S. House. He is a Notre Dame Law School graduate living near Pittsburgh where he and his wife raised their family.
