So how did FDR do? He did not end the Great Depression, in fact he suffered the "Roosevelt Recession" in his second term, in 1937-8; unemployment jumped 5% to 19% and manufacturing output fell 37%. That is really bad. The Depression only ended with World War II, it had little to do with FDR's alphabet soup of stimulus measures. He badly overreached with his Supreme Court-packing plan and was cut down to size by Democrats and Republicans in Congress.
In foreign policy he assiduously avoided involvement in World War II, although he believed America should involve itself, until December 7, 1941. He had done nothing to prepare the country for war, there was such a shortage of the materiel of war-making that the first soldiers-in-waiting had to train with trucks impersonating tanks and anti-tank artillery that fired flour, yes flour. There was a shortage of marshmallows, evidently, and of live ammo. He mobilized effectively in time and the U.S. won the war. He was on death's door during the runup to the 1944 election and his judgment was...not the best at Tehran and Yalta.
Roosevelt lifted fear from Americans, lifted their spirits. He inspired many who worked for him and repeatedly lied to everyone: in his his private life, to his mother about Eleanor and to Eleanor about Lucy. As president he lied whenever it suited his larger purposes. Lying was a means to an end for FDR and he found the means readily and repeatedly at hand. He ruined some of those closest to him, Eleanor, Harry Hopkins, fired Joseph Kennedy, froze out all of his vice presidents, his last, Harry Truman, later remarked that Roosevelt "was the coldest man I ever knew. He didn't give a damn for you, for me, for anybody that I could tell. But he was a great president." Harry Truman's verdict is the consensus of cognescenti who rank Roosevelt as second best president in U.S. history after Abraham Lincoln.
What of his predecessor, that life of the party, Herbert Hoover? Radiating charm and possessed of a riveting speaking ability Hoover here addresses a "large crowd" in the 1932 campaign.
"Happy days are here again?"
Hoover was a technocrat. He detested the presidency...
...Never heard a president say that before.
Hoover's judgment was like my driving ability. He had a sixth sense always to make the wrong turn. The eradication of poverty in the United States was in sight, he said in 1929, months before the stock market crashed. Still, he pursued and achieved the laudatory goal of a balanced federal budget. The measures he took in an attempt to get the country out of the depression were half-hearted, he believed that fundamentally government could not play a decisive role and that the market had to correct itself, woefully inadequate, bizarre. However:
However, Hoover did pursue many policies in an attempt to pull the country out of depression. In 1929 he authorized the Mexican Repatriation program to help unemployed Mexican citizens return home. The program was largely a forced migration of approximately 500,000 people to Mexico, and continued until 1937.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Hoover
He was Donald Trump before Donald Trump was!
Another of the "many policies" he tried was the excellent Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act which cemented America in the Depression. He correctly predicted five of the ensuing zero recoveries.
In the 1932 campaign Hoover was offered tributes of food at many stops on his whistle tours, these tributes were in the form of rotten eggs and spoiled farm produce which were thrown at him and he was the subject of a few serious assassination attempts all of which happily ended with the president still alive. New towns were named in his honor, they were called "Hoovervilles," and housed those whose homes had been taken from them and who had no place else to live but in ramshackle tar and cardboard structures on the Mall in Washington and in parks. He ingratiated himself to returning World War I veterans by firing on them during protests against him.
His vision on foreign affairs was as searching as it was on domestic matters...
Hoover visited 10 European countries in March 1938, the month of Nazi Germany's Anschluss of Austria, and stated "I do not believe a widespread war is at all probable in the near future."
...and he advocated the far-sighted policy of Fortress America isolationism to keep America out of foreign wars.
Despite hating being president he ran for reelection. He retained his popularity among Republicans and was renominated for president in 1932 but lost in a 54%-39% squeaker, only a 26% decline from his share of the vote in 1928 and managed to win a credible 59 electoral votes to only 472 for Roosevelt. In his post-presidency life:
In 1936, Hoover entertained hopes of receiving the Republican presidential nomination again, and thus facing Roosevelt in a rematch.
And:
By 1940, Hoover was again being spoken of as the possible nominee of the party in the presidential election.
For all his efforts Herbert Hoover is accorded a ranking of 31st among the 44 U.S. presidents.
In foreign policy he assiduously avoided involvement in World War II, although he believed America should involve itself, until December 7, 1941. He had done nothing to prepare the country for war, there was such a shortage of the materiel of war-making that the first soldiers-in-waiting had to train with trucks impersonating tanks and anti-tank artillery that fired flour, yes flour. There was a shortage of marshmallows, evidently, and of live ammo. He mobilized effectively in time and the U.S. won the war. He was on death's door during the runup to the 1944 election and his judgment was...not the best at Tehran and Yalta.
What of his predecessor, that life of the party, Herbert Hoover? Radiating charm and possessed of a riveting speaking ability Hoover here addresses a "large crowd" in the 1932 campaign.
Hoover was a technocrat. He detested the presidency...
...Never heard a president say that before.
Hoover's judgment was like my driving ability. He had a sixth sense always to make the wrong turn. The eradication of poverty in the United States was in sight, he said in 1929, months before the stock market crashed. Still, he pursued and achieved the laudatory goal of a balanced federal budget. The measures he took in an attempt to get the country out of the depression were half-hearted, he believed that fundamentally government could not play a decisive role and that the market had to correct itself, woefully inadequate, bizarre. However:
However, Hoover did pursue many policies in an attempt to pull the country out of depression. In 1929 he authorized the Mexican Repatriation program to help unemployed Mexican citizens return home. The program was largely a forced migration of approximately 500,000 people to Mexico, and continued until 1937.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Hoover
He was Donald Trump before Donald Trump was!
Another of the "many policies" he tried was the excellent Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act which cemented America in the Depression. He correctly predicted five of the ensuing zero recoveries.
In the 1932 campaign Hoover was offered tributes of food at many stops on his whistle tours, these tributes were in the form of rotten eggs and spoiled farm produce which were thrown at him and he was the subject of a few serious assassination attempts all of which happily ended with the president still alive. New towns were named in his honor, they were called "Hoovervilles," and housed those whose homes had been taken from them and who had no place else to live but in ramshackle tar and cardboard structures on the Mall in Washington and in parks. He ingratiated himself to returning World War I veterans by firing on them during protests against him.
His vision on foreign affairs was as searching as it was on domestic matters...
Hoover visited 10 European countries in March 1938, the month of Nazi Germany's Anschluss of Austria, and stated "I do not believe a widespread war is at all probable in the near future."
...and he advocated the far-sighted policy of Fortress America isolationism to keep America out of foreign wars.
Despite hating being president he ran for reelection. He retained his popularity among Republicans and was renominated for president in 1932 but lost in a 54%-39% squeaker, only a 26% decline from his share of the vote in 1928 and managed to win a credible 59 electoral votes to only 472 for Roosevelt. In his post-presidency life:
In 1936, Hoover entertained hopes of receiving the Republican presidential nomination again, and thus facing Roosevelt in a rematch.
And:
By 1940, Hoover was again being spoken of as the possible nominee of the party in the presidential election.
For all his efforts Herbert Hoover is accorded a ranking of 31st among the 44 U.S. presidents.
