Much mischaracterization surrounds the greatest economic crisis in American history. For starters, I'm going to skip ahead to the election of 1932, where Franklin Roosevelt defeated the otherwise popular Herbert Hoover to become only the third Democrat to be elected president since the Civil War. The mythology concerns the why of Roosevelt's superior popularity. Most folks you might ask would say FDR had a grander vision of what it would take to end the Depression — and they would be wrong.
First off, the stock market crash of 1929 had not yet fully morphed into the Great Depression by 1932. Paul Johnson, in Modern Times, makes the case that FDR won because he campaigned on ending Prohibition. He was a "Wet" and Hoover was a "Dry." I posed this to my mother, who voted for the first time in that election. She was shocked and amazed — and then realized that she really did vote to end Prohibition, not the Depression.
Johnson does still blame the Depression on Hoover — not as president, but rather as secretary of commerce under Coolidge. Hoover sent boat-loads of money to Latin American nations to stimulate markets for American exports. The recipient regimes were often soon overthrown, and the money was embezzled, damaging the liquidity of the US government...........To Read More.....
My Take - It was Hoover who set the ground work for the Great Depression but it wasn't while he was in the Coolidge administration, although this didn't help, and Coolidge thought Hoover was an idiot. He was right. Also, FDR ran criticizing Hoover's efforts to end the depression, and then out Hoovered Hoover when he became president, and that turned it into the Great Depression. Let's put the blame where it properly belongs, FDR. Please view my FDR,
and Great Depression files.
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