Herbert Hoover by Glen Jeansonne

Author:Glen Jeansonne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-08-23T13:30:41+00:00

TEN

Fighting the Depression

As the 72nd Congress opened, both parties looked forward to the 1932 presidential elections. The outcome of the 1930 congressional elections made it more difficult to blame Hoover for the deepening Depression. After deaths and subsequent new elections in some districts, the Democrats ended up with a slim majority in the House, which enabled them to elect as Speaker John Nance Garner of Texas. The Republicans organized the Senate with a bare majority after a long standoff during which Progressive Republicans divided their votes to prevent any candidate from receiving a majority. Finally, Bertrand Snell of New York was elected to lead the upper house, defeating John Q. Tilson of Connecticut. The Democrats approached the session without a single national spokesman and with no leader by consensus. They decided to wait for Hoover to propose legislation and then to caucus over how to respond. Both houses were splintered, as in the previous, 71st, Congress, by a bloc of mostly Western mavericks who called themselves Progressives, yet, lacking a national program, were more appropriately insurgents, concerned primarily with protecting the interests of their agricultural constituents. They often voted with the Democrats. Divided government during the course of the worst depression in the nation’s history left each party chained by the idiosyncrasies of the other. The chief imbroglio arose over whom to blame if legislation stagnated, which, in fact, it did not, at least not to the degree expected. The Democrats walked a tenuous tightwire; they did not want the Depression to end on Hoover’s watch; but neither did they want to be so obviously obstructionist as to receive blame themselves. The Democrats struck a wildcat well of ready cash, but it spurted from a single source: the party’s national chairman, John J. Raskob, chief owner of General Motors, who financed the Democrats almost single-handedly and thereby gained a dominant role in determining policy and candidates. Not since Mark Hanna bankrolled William McKinley had a business magnate bet his fortune on politics.1

The 72nd Congress marked the second phase in Hoover’s war on the Depression, and he took the offensive with the most ambitious legislative agenda of any president to that time. He also grew far more assertive in pushing through his unified, integrated, holistic healing balm to the economic infection. From beginning to end, he strove to dispose as well as to propose, talking regularly with influential congressmen, the GOP National Committee, and anyone who might pave the highway to passage, including members of the opposition. He did not dislike Garner, and they struck a number of deals, although he did not entirely trust him either, especially because the Texan coveted his party’s presidential nomination. Garner usually limited his interference with Hoover’s bills to amending or delaying them, not defeating them outright. He was a savvy politician with no inclination to damage his own presidential aspirations. Congress did not assemble until December 8, for Hoover’s State of the Union address, and then the chief executive bombarded it with a succession

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