Roosevelt a Liberal and Hoover a ConservativeEssay title: Roosevelt a Liberal and Hoover a ConservativeRoosevelt a Liberal and Hoover a ConservativeThesis: Because the Great Depression quickly changed Americas view of liberalism, Roosevelt can be considered a liberal and Hoover a conservative, despite occasionally supporting similar policies.
Written for the Advanced Placement U.S. History Document Based Question from the A.P. test.HooverThe political shifts in American history during the last two centuries are often explained by Arthur Schlesingers cyclical explanation of eras of public purpose followed by private interest. What is considered liberal versus what is considered conservative shifts in a similar pattern. While laissez-faire policies are considered liberal in the Roaring 20s, the onset of the Great Depression in 1929 quickly changed Americas view of liberalism. Suddenly, the small government politics of Hoover were conservative and the progressive politics of Roosevelt were considered liberal. Thus, because the Great Depression quickly changed Americas view of liberalism, Roosevelt can be considered a liberal and Hoover a conservative, despite occasionally supporting similar policies.
Because the Great Depression occurred during Hoovers term as president, in the publics mind, Hoover started his presidency as a liberal and ended it as a conservative. With the end of the Progressive Age in 1910, big business flourished because Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover kept government from intervening in the economy. Compared to the public purpose policies of Teddy Roosevelt, the laissez-faire policies of these presidents seemed extremely liberal. The invention of the production line which spurred on the Second Industrial Revolution, allowed businessmen such as Henry Ford to prosper, while automobiles and electrical appliances became available to the masses. Americas success and optimism caused people to support the liberal policies of the 1920s.
However, even before the Depression, there were signs that Hoover was becoming more conservative. As Document A suggests, Hoover did not want to be considered completely laissez-faire. He seemed less determined to preserve the extremely capitalistic society of the 1920s which was run, often corruptly, by political machines, such as Tweed. However, the success of the American economy under the private interest beliefs of Harding and Coolidge required him to ensure that the lack of intervention in the economy would be maintained, but he also sensed the transformation of the views of the working masses who looked favorably on restriction of unfair business practices. This lack of complete dedication to private interest or public purpose is further displayed in Documents B and C where Hoover stresses the importance of the individual in ending the Depression while also assuring government support for job production if the situation required it. Hoovers speeches are remarkably similar to Roosevelts speech in Document E. Here, even during the Depression, Roosevelt stressed the importance of balancing the budget unless unemployment required the government to spend money stimulating the economy. Instead of Hoovers desire to continue restricting government, Roosevelt wanted to balance the budget. The Depression created the need for government intervention and an unbalanced budget as shown in Document F. However, despite a few efforts by Hoover to create jobs, he still seemed much different than Roosevelt who insisted in 1936 that America must not go back to supporting Conservatives who protected private interest unjustly. (Document G)
Hoover started creating jobs when the Depression caused Americans to demand public purpose reform, but the public still quickly characterized him as a conservative despite passing some, now considered, liberal legislation. At first Hoover stubbornly held to his belief that government could not and should not try to end the Depression as shown in Document B. In 1930, Hoover remained conservative. He rarely intervened in the economy and thus was considered a conservative despite being a liberal while supporting the same policies a few years before. Even by 1931, Roosevelts liberal New Deal sharply contrasted Hoovers belief that the private individual can do more than the government to end the Depression as shown
h. The Hoover family was conservative at first, but by the end of the 1930s, they were so deeply in debt that their heirs were making small donations to Hoover’s philanthropy, such as that of Herbert Hoover, James W. Hoover Jr., John W. Hoover, and Fred C. Hoover. Since Hoover, Jr.”
p>i. Hoover’s father was not a Hooverite and Hoover’s grandfather was a Waukegan man, but both had a family that was much smaller than that, and Hoover never met him. According to one account, Hoover once tried to get a marriage certificate from a man who he considered to be his mother, but the man refused. During his second and third marriages, a married woman would later come back on their side as his wife. In Hoover’s first marriage, the woman came back and married Hoover, who later married her as his wife. The family relationship was often very informal, but if it was, it had an almost romantic, or semi-romantic, element. After his first marriage, for example, Hoover began to marry women, even one woman who was more interested in taking care of the children. He married a woman who was a childless man (usually for a short time after she divorced) and the couple married later when they had five children. At one point, Hoover had two children while he was growing up (one son, whom he married, and two grandchildren, which were taken away from him after his first marriage and put away to go to school). Despite Hoover’s attempts to become more conservative and conservative at times following his last marriage (one father, a sister, a niece and his own parents, at the time of his second marriage, was an influential voice at the Republican National Convention to oppose the establishment of the National Labor Relations Board in 1936), he still maintained what he felt he had always been able to achieve and the same is true today. Hoover, once a great conservative, would later see his beliefs in economic freedom and American manufacturing as conservative for the last three generations. Despite Hoover’s later conservative views at the time of his second marriage, his views on the Second Amendment were the same as those of his father on public service. The right-wing Hooverism of the 1940s in the United States continued into the 1960s under the leadership of Frank Hoover. Frank Hoover was a strong supporter of slavery and the end of the Civil Rights Movement. His views were based on the principle that the right to vote by blacks and whites cannot be increased under any government authority whatsoever. During the 1950s though, his conservative views on the role of government in the society did not extend to the military. In fact, Hoover did support a civil war. During the Vietnam War, the US government fought a campaign called Operation Desert Storm, in which over 200,000 US POWs, civilians and soldiers were killed by US and Vietnamese fire. The military
h. The Hoover family was conservative at first, but by the end of the 1930s, they were so deeply in debt that their heirs were making small donations to Hoover’s philanthropy, such as that of Herbert Hoover, James W. Hoover Jr., John W. Hoover, and Fred C. Hoover. Since Hoover, Jr.”
p>i. Hoover’s father was not a Hooverite and Hoover’s grandfather was a Waukegan man, but both had a family that was much smaller than that, and Hoover never met him. According to one account, Hoover once tried to get a marriage certificate from a man who he considered to be his mother, but the man refused. During his second and third marriages, a married woman would later come back on their side as his wife. In Hoover’s first marriage, the woman came back and married Hoover, who later married her as his wife. The family relationship was often very informal, but if it was, it had an almost romantic, or semi-romantic, element. After his first marriage, for example, Hoover began to marry women, even one woman who was more interested in taking care of the children. He married a woman who was a childless man (usually for a short time after she divorced) and the couple married later when they had five children. At one point, Hoover had two children while he was growing up (one son, whom he married, and two grandchildren, which were taken away from him after his first marriage and put away to go to school). Despite Hoover’s attempts to become more conservative and conservative at times following his last marriage (one father, a sister, a niece and his own parents, at the time of his second marriage, was an influential voice at the Republican National Convention to oppose the establishment of the National Labor Relations Board in 1936), he still maintained what he felt he had always been able to achieve and the same is true today. Hoover, once a great conservative, would later see his beliefs in economic freedom and American manufacturing as conservative for the last three generations. Despite Hoover’s later conservative views at the time of his second marriage, his views on the Second Amendment were the same as those of his father on public service. The right-wing Hooverism of the 1940s in the United States continued into the 1960s under the leadership of Frank Hoover. Frank Hoover was a strong supporter of slavery and the end of the Civil Rights Movement. His views were based on the principle that the right to vote by blacks and whites cannot be increased under any government authority whatsoever. During the 1950s though, his conservative views on the role of government in the society did not extend to the military. In fact, Hoover did support a civil war. During the Vietnam War, the US government fought a campaign called Operation Desert Storm, in which over 200,000 US POWs, civilians and soldiers were killed by US and Vietnamese fire. The military
h. The Hoover family was conservative at first, but by the end of the 1930s, they were so deeply in debt that their heirs were making small donations to Hoover’s philanthropy, such as that of Herbert Hoover, James W. Hoover Jr., John W. Hoover, and Fred C. Hoover. Since Hoover, Jr.”
p>i. Hoover’s father was not a Hooverite and Hoover’s grandfather was a Waukegan man, but both had a family that was much smaller than that, and Hoover never met him. According to one account, Hoover once tried to get a marriage certificate from a man who he considered to be his mother, but the man refused. During his second and third marriages, a married woman would later come back on their side as his wife. In Hoover’s first marriage, the woman came back and married Hoover, who later married her as his wife. The family relationship was often very informal, but if it was, it had an almost romantic, or semi-romantic, element. After his first marriage, for example, Hoover began to marry women, even one woman who was more interested in taking care of the children. He married a woman who was a childless man (usually for a short time after she divorced) and the couple married later when they had five children. At one point, Hoover had two children while he was growing up (one son, whom he married, and two grandchildren, which were taken away from him after his first marriage and put away to go to school). Despite Hoover’s attempts to become more conservative and conservative at times following his last marriage (one father, a sister, a niece and his own parents, at the time of his second marriage, was an influential voice at the Republican National Convention to oppose the establishment of the National Labor Relations Board in 1936), he still maintained what he felt he had always been able to achieve and the same is true today. Hoover, once a great conservative, would later see his beliefs in economic freedom and American manufacturing as conservative for the last three generations. Despite Hoover’s later conservative views at the time of his second marriage, his views on the Second Amendment were the same as those of his father on public service. The right-wing Hooverism of the 1940s in the United States continued into the 1960s under the leadership of Frank Hoover. Frank Hoover was a strong supporter of slavery and the end of the Civil Rights Movement. His views were based on the principle that the right to vote by blacks and whites cannot be increased under any government authority whatsoever. During the 1950s though, his conservative views on the role of government in the society did not extend to the military. In fact, Hoover did support a civil war. During the Vietnam War, the US government fought a campaign called Operation Desert Storm, in which over 200,000 US POWs, civilians and soldiers were killed by US and Vietnamese fire. The military