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1: Herbert Hoover and the Ark of the Covenant
- University of Virginia Press
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1 | heRbeRT hooveR anD The aRK of The covenanT a s the Democratic party’s national convention opened on June 28, 1932, herbert hoover broached the issue of his likely opponent with his press secretary, Theodore Joslin. “Do you think Roosevelt will be nominated?” the president inquired. Joslin assured him that the governor of new york would overcome his projected onehundred -vote deficit on an early ballot. less sanguine about franklin D. Roosevelt’s chances, hoover noted: “i am afraid of baker. . . . he’s a strong second choice of the convention and would be a harder man for me to beat.” The strength of ohio’s newton D. baker depended on his reputation for eloquence, intelligence, and probity. Woodrow Wilson’s secretary of war, Joslin conceded, would succeed if Roosevelt lost momentum by the fourth or fifth ballot. There seemed “one way to nail him [baker]. [William Randolph] hearst hates him,” Joslin said, referring to the newspaper magnate’s abhorrence of baker’s internationalist views. Joslin suggested a telephone call by the hoover aide lawrence Richey to louis b. Mayer, vice president of Metro-goldwyn-Mayer and vice chairman of the california state Republican central committee. Mayer would be asked to warn the isolationist hearst against the growing likelihood of a baker nomination. The notion of selecting the weaker of hoover’s two potential opponents in the coming campaign sounded appealing , and the call was made. hoover exulted: the scheme worked “to perfection.” “if baker isn’t stopped, it will not be the fault of hearst.”1 This is not to suggest that herbert hoover had a hand in the choice of his adversary in the 1932 presidential contest, but rather to shed light on his strategy. hoover’s actions seem to suggest that he ascribed to the “boy scout,” or squire, theory—a belief shared by many who served with Roosevelt in the Wilson administration and popularized in the columns of Walter lippmann, which held that the governor of new york was shallow , pliant, eager to please all comers, and possessed of few if any con- 10 the republican party in the age of roosevelt victions. This view was misguided. unhindered by dogma, amenable to ideas that challenged economic orthodoxy, and surrounded by advisers who discarded traditional approaches to previous economic downturns, Roosevelt shed hoover’s measured view of the role of the central government and the presidency in managing the economy.2 While the squire of hyde park assumed an experimental approach to the great Depression, hoover, despite such innovations as the Reconstruction finance corporation, no longer seemed the modernizer he had been during his service at commerce in the new economic era of the 1920s. “full of information,” Raymond Moley recounted, hoover was “imprisoned by his knowledge.” indeed, when the Republican governor of iowa, Daniel Webster Turner, called on the president in 1931 and offered his appraisal of agrarian sentiment, “Mr. hoover brought the interview to a close with the brusque statement, ‘That’s not my information.’” surrounded by supporters who tended to revere him and confirm his appraisal of the economic and political outlook, and given to a growingly defensive frame of mind, hoover was shrewdly evaluated by fellow Republicans. The Kansas congressman clifford hope observed: “no one could ever discuss anything with hoover while he was president because he very distinctly gave the impression that his mind was already made up.” verne Marshall, the outspoken editor of the Cedar Rapids GazetteRepublican , admonished hoover in May 1933 that his miscues had often resulted from information provided him by associates who were “too sympathetic or too dumb to give it to you as you should have had it.” one needs only to compare the “yes-men” who surrounded hoover with the often diverse, even discordant, advisers who served Roosevelt.3 no sharp line demarcated hoover’s viewpoint on economic and political matters before and after the great Depression. his economic ideology , shaped when he served as secretary of commerce, rested on the principle of voluntarism. government regulation and control of business , he believed, was clumsy, incapable of adjusting to changing economic needs. it produced results more abusive than the problems to be remedied. The vast and harmful tide of such legislation could be avoided by the “organization of business itself,” by business leadership operating through voluntary associations, which would preserve initiative and foster progress. cooperation would eliminate waste in the form of destructive competition, business-labor strife, extremes of the business cycle, unemployment, and lack of synchronized...