kiss my feet
Explanation: “The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: if it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something. The millions in want will not stand by silently forever while the things to satisfy their needs are within easy reach.” — Franklin Roosevelt, 1932 What’s interesting in retrospect is that Roosevelt wasn’t so much campaigning on the government intervention that characterized his coming administration as he was lambasting Hoover for too much intervention.
Out of one side of his mouth, Roosevelt (FDR) criticized Hoover for raising taxes, overspending and putting too many “on the dole” (welfare), not too few. Roosevelt’s VP candidate John Nance Garner of Texas accused Hoover of “leading the country down the path of socialism.” The Democratic Platform of 1932 called for a 25% reduction in federal spending, a balanced budget, and less government interference in private enterprise. From the other side of his mouth, Roosevelt told the appropriate voters on the left that he’d do more to help people and he’d already done just that as governor of New York with work programs and direct relief. The quote at the top of the chapter from a 1932 commencement address at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta promises government intervention, for instance. That was more in line with what actually happened once he got in office when his administration unbalanced the budget, expanded the government, and interfered with private enterprise more than any in history. We often accuse politicians of betraying campaign promises once they get in office when, really, they just encounter opposition or changing circumstances. In FDR’s case, though, he seems to have been either completely full of baloney or, to put it more charitably, very flexible and adaptable. Voters often respond more to personality and other subliminal messages than content and were clueless, forgiving or adaptable enough themselves to vote Roosevelt into office three more times, in 1936, ’40 and ’44. Obviously, something worked and in 1932 they were, above all, desperate. In the 1932 election, there was indeed a candidate who promised more spending and government intervention as a solution to the Depression, but it wasn’t FDR; it was democratic socialist and Presbyterian minister Norman Thomas, who garnered 2% of the popular vote. As for FDR’s mixed message of doing more with less, Hoover called him a “chameleon on plaid.”
