A funny little book titled Oh Yeah by a journalist named Edward Angly became a national bestseller in 1931. It was a compilation of a few hundred statements from 1929 to 1931 by President Hoover, members of his cabinet, and business leaders, explaining variously that the Depression wasn't so bad or that it was over or that pretty much nothing could be done about it.
The quotes were accompanied by drawings of the stock market indexes going down and down and unemployment going up and up. I thought of that old book today and opened it to find a few quotes from Herbert Hoover. Although what Hoover had to say had little relationship to reality, by today's standards as set by Bush, McCain, and Palin, Hoover's comments were not that bad, which may tell us something about where those in power today are.
First, a news report from October 1930: "President Hoover has designated Robert R. Lamont, Secretary of Commerce, as chairman of the President's special committee on unemployment." Then another report from October 1930: "President Hoover has summoned Colonel Arthur Woods to help place 2,500,000 men back to work this Winter." Woods was a former New York City police commissioner, a popular writer on fighting crime, a military man, the sort of man who could handle anything. Of course unemployment escalated and 2.5 million workers were not put back to work. In fact, the worst had not yet come at the time this was written, and Colonel Arthur Woods had nothing except nostrums and gestures to deal with something he understood as well as Sarah Palin understands the constitutional role of the vice president.
Back to Hoover, and this is where things get good. In December 1930, Hoover told Congress that "economic depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement."
Six months later, in June 1931, however, Hoover spoke to a group of Indiana Republican newspaper editors in a different tone: "I am able to propose an American plan to you...we shall by scientific research and invention, lift the standard of living and security of diffusion of wealth, a decrease in poverty and a great reduction in crime. And this plan will be carried out if we just keep on giving the American people a chance."
Hoover called for the diffusion of wealth, a decrease in poverty? Was Herbert advocating socialism? McCain might think so, but Hoover was simply BS-ing for his fellow Republicans, campaigning for reelection, and offering them rhetoric totally disconnected from reality.
Then as the collapse deepened, in October 1931, Hoover announced a small-scale policy that sounds eerily familiar: "I requested the governors of the federal reserve banks to secure the cooperation of the bankers in their territory to make some advances on the security of the assets of the closed banks or take over some of their assets...such a measure will contribute to free many business activities and to relieve many families from the hardship over the forthcoming Winter and in a measure reverse the process of deflation involved in the tying up of deposits."
Of course the "closed banks had collapsed, their was no FDIC, and more importantly, Social Security, unemployment insurance, and real trade union rights did not yet exist. Hoover had no plan or much interest in dealing with the depression as it impact Main Street. Instead he turned to policies, although they were on a small scale, weren't too different than our capitalists today.
Finally, as times got tougher, Hoover noted, "the depression has been deepened by events from abroad that are beyond the control of our citizens or government."
It is certainly time to say "Oh Yeah" to Bush and McCain, with complete contempt, before we will confront, what Herbert Hoover, more successful in business, more intelligent, and, more of a "compassionate conservative" than either Bush or McCain faced in 1932.
--Norman Markowitz is a contributing editor of Political Affairs.
