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Tragic Transition Part I

© Earl Rickard

Just before noon on Saturday, March 4,1933, President Herbert Hoover stepped into the back seat of an open touring car, tipped his hat, and shook hands with President-elect Franklin Roosevelt. Hoover sat down and said not another word. FDR tried small talk, but Hoover had said all he was going to say to Roosevelt during the rancorous White House transition meetings. The mile long ride to the inauguration was as cold as the wind blowing down Pennsylvania Avenue.

During the tragic winter of 1932-33 the Great Depression had a partner in crime -- the American system for inaugurating presidents. Since the beginning of the republic, the presidential inauguration took place on March 4 of the year following the election. Slow travel in colonial times accounted for this long lapse. In 1932, Congress sent the Twentieth Amendment to the states for ratification. This Amendment changed the inauguration date to January 20, effective in 1937. Therefore, the transition or interregnum between Hoover and Roosevelt was the last under the old system. Occurring as it did during the bleakest winter of the Great Depression, this five month interregnun created a tragic episode for a tormented nation.

The winter of '32-33 marks one of the great dividing lines in American economic, social, and political history. For many years historians painted this interregnum as the final crash of the bankrupt New Era and the beginning of the phoenix-like rise of the United States under the banner of the New Deal. More recent scholarship has challenged this view.

Contrary to common myth and the writings of many "Roosevelt" historians, President Hoover acted against the depression with many progressive weapons, such as the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the Federal Home Loan Bank, and the Glass-Steagall Act of 1932 -- foundations FDR would later build upon. Hoover's support of these measures horrified conservative Republicns, yet the Democratic party attacked Hoover at every turn as a conservative unable to act against the depression.

Drops in the business cycle are like the common cold, and must run their course -- Hoover's economy had pneumonia. According to "Hoover" historians, by the summer of 1932 the President had saved the patient from death and was presiding over the long awaited upturn. But then during the presidential election campaign, businessman's fear of a Roosevelt victory pushed the economy downhill, ending in panic during the interregnum.

In 1932 the major difference between the Hoover and Roosevelt campaigns lay in their perception of the causes of the depression. For Hoover the problem had international roots and needed both domestic and foreign solutions. Conversely, the keystone of the New Deal program was the belief that the depression resulted from the Republican New Era's failed domestic policies. Adding fuel to the fire, the Roosevelt camp, in the words of historian Alfred Rollins, saw Hoover as the leader of the "Republican gang of power and perquisite." Hoover, meanwhile, thought Roosevelt and his advisors spelled the end of the gold standard, balanced budgets, and all the icons Republicanism. The President was sure that FDR and his crowd of collectivists would bring the country to ruin. But the people had spoken on November 8, and, as Laurin Henry noted in Presidential Transitions, "A new reservoir of power had been filled up."

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