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25 January 2010
Hoover to Roosevelt: Transition in a Time of Crisis
By Donald A. Ritchie
Donald A. Ritchie is historian of the United States Senate and author of several books, including his recent Electing FDR: The New Deal Campaign of 1932 (2007), and Reporting from Washington: The History of the Washington Press Corps (2005).
The Depression Era handover of the presidency from Herbert Hoover to Franklin D. Roosevelt was among the most politically difficult, but it remained peaceful, and the lessons learned have influenced subsequent U.S. presidential transitions.
Few events have tested democracy as deeply and profoundly as the Great Depression. Some democracies did not survive the challenge. In Germany, the unloved Weimar Republic gave way to Nazi tyranny. Not two months later, the U.S. presidency transferred from Herbert Hoover to Franklin D. Roosevelt. No American transition had occurred under more dire circumstances. American democracy emerged stronger for the experience. The U.S. economy, which had slid into the Great Depression after the stock market crash of 1929, fell even further during and immediately after the presidential campaign of 1932. Over the winter following that election, thousands of banks failed, businesses shut down, and a quarter of the national work force was left unemployed. Voters blamed President Hoover for their plight and turned to his challenger in a landslide. But while a pending constitutional amendment would later halve the transition time between administrations, the existing system still required a four-month waiting period before the new president could be inaugurated.
In that long interim, President Hoover invited his successor to the White House to discuss the troubling economic conditions. Roosevelt accepted and met personally with Hoover three times prior to his inauguration. However, the two men had vastly different ideas about how to handle the crisis. Hoover had sponsored some creative programs in response to the Depression, but he remained adamantly opposed to direct government aid to the unemployed. FDR (as the headlines dubbed him) pledged a “New Deal” for the American people, and promised a more experimental approach to resolving the economic crisis and creating a more secure society. Hoover told voters that the campaign was not between two men but between two philosophies of government, and warned that Roosevelt’s reliance on government solutions would lead to regimentation.
In their meetings, Hoover sought to commit Roosevelt to the outgoing administration’s economic policies, even though Roosevelt had just won an election by campaigning against them. Roosevelt explained that he came to learn, not to consent to specific policies. He felt that he lacked authority to assume responsibility for government actions before he officially took office. As the banking crisis deepened, the two met again on Hoover’s last day in office. Roosevelt declined Hoover’s request to sign a joint proclamation closing all U.S. banks. Hoover could have issued the proclamation on his own authority but, politically defeated and personally unpopular, he did not. FDR would wait to act until he became president the next day. For Roosevelt, Hoover’s insistence on joint action suggested a failure to grasp how differently the new administration planned to operate. Yet at the same time, Roosevelt accepted an offer from Hoover’s top Treasury Department officials to remain on the job to draft emergency banking legislation for the new administration. Under that plan, Roosevelt declared a bank holiday, closed all the banks, and then reopened those that were solvent, following government scrutiny of their books. Hoover’s indecisiveness handed his successor a triumph at the very start of his presidency. Roosevelt’s New Dealers regarded the bank holiday as the turning point of the Depression. Public confidence rebounded with the reopening of the banks in sound condition.
The transition between Hoover and Roosevelt had been peaceful but not productive. Observers faulted both men: Hoover for asking Roosevelt to do more than he should have; Roosevelt for not finding some room for cooperation. Lessons learned from that experience have in some ways affected all subsequent presidential transitions, through to the 2009 transition between George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Outgoing presidents now work to facilitate the transfer of power to their successors, offering assistance and making recommendations but not trying to force their future course of action.
The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. government.
