Roosevelt was also brimming with new ideas, for instance, his ‘New Deal’ had 3 simple aims: Relief, Recovery and Reform. He said: “I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people” and this brought a new hope to the American people because it made them feel that Roosevelt was going to turn their situation around. He also proved that he was willing to help the suffering when he was the Governor of New York when he decided to set up the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration and spent $20 million of income tax to aid this administration. This helped Americans to vote for him and allowed him to win the election by himself because it showed that he could think up new ideas quickly that would help the American people at that time, who were going through poverty.
Roosevelt was also a man of action. He believed in an active government; one that would get the people back on their feet whenever they needed. He vowed to set up agencies that would help ordinary and poor Americans and he did it; he kept his promises. This can be shown in his New Deal, his alphabet agencies and his Temporary Emergency Relief Administration he set up in late 1931. These agencies displayed that Roosevelt was willing to spend government money to get Americans back to work so they could earn a good living again. This helped him to gain votes by himself in the election because it shows that he is willing to help all the poor and unemployed Americans so they would definitely vote for him because ordinary Americans were desperate for a president who kept his promises and was prepared to take government action to help them out.
Roosevelt also hired a group of people called the ‘Brain Trust’ who were experts at law and helped him shape the New Deal. This gave Roosevelt a good image because not only does it show that he admits that he is only human and has some things he doesn’t know but he is also prepared to listen to each member of the Brain Trust’s ideas to help him come to a final New Deal. This helped him gain popularity and votes because ordinary Americans as a good listener and hired many experts to help him so the final results for all of Roosevelt’s plans were bound to be good. Therefore, Roosevelt himself was responsible for his election victory because he had expert help so it showed the public that he was a good listener so if they pleaded for help; Roosevelt was probably going to give them help.
Finally, Roosevelt was also responsible for his election victory because he ended prohibition. Prohibition was when the government made drinking alcohol illegal. This caused many problems because there were gangsters and corruption in the government itself. Therefore, to end all these problems, Roosevelt ended prohibition and this helped him gain many votes in the election because not only the poor and suffering would vote for him but even some gangsters would vote for him because he made their favorite past time, drinking, legal. And this ended a lot of violence because people were happy now that they could drink alcohol without being afraid of getting arrested.
On the other hand, another factor that helped Roosevelt win the 1932 election was president Hoover’s perceived failures. President Herbert Hoover encapsulated the American Dream. He was born in 1874 and lived with his uncle in a small rural area in Oregon. He studied engineering at Stanford University and had a good reputation as an engineer. He became a millionaire before he became 35 years old and he believed that people should earn their own living through hard work and enterprise. However, it was this belief that went against him. When the Great Depression struck in the 1930s, people were desperate for the government to help restore their good lives in the 1920s. But instead, Hoover clung to his belief that people should earn their living through hard work so he just assured that “prosperity was just around the corner”. But people saw him as a do nothing president therefore lost faith in him. His belief in individualism gave people the wrong idea and the Republican laissez-faire policies made people lose all hope that Hoover was going to get them back on their feet. The final straw came when a group of bonus marchers asked him to pay them earlier so they could afford to feed their families. Hoover however, had them all killed by the military and accused them of being communists. That was when the American people lost all hope in him improving their current indecent situation because they saw that he wouldn’t even help a small group of ex-soldiers so he definitely wouldn’t be prepared to help all of the suffering in America. Later, people came up with the saying “In Hoover we trusted, now we’re busted” which shows their hate for president Hoover and they were prepared to vote for anyone, as long as it wasn’t Hoover. This helped Roosevelt win the election of 1932 because Americans hated Hoover because they felt he didn’t care about them and is not willing to help them anymore. Roosevelt however, was the opposite and was prepared to help the suffering Americans in as many ways as possible. Therefore, Roosevelt gained many people’s votes and won the 1932 presidential election.
However, it would be too harsh to say that Hoover was a do nothing president because he did actually try to help Americans in 1932 but it was too little too late. And example of his efforts to help Americans was voluntarism. He persuaded businesses to continue as though there was no Depression and to not cut wages or sack workers. He urged businesses to keep producing and urged people to buy but this had little or no effect because as the Depression worsened, businesses had no choice but to sack their workers and cut the wages.
Hoover also tried unemployment relief by setting up the President’s Emergency Committee for Employment and spent $500 million to agencies to give relief but Hoover himself didn’t want to directly help people as this made them lazy and unable to help themselves and depended on the government for help.
Hoover finally set up the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) which lent $2 billion to rescue banks and insurance companies however, a lot of the money went to smaller banks and banks in towns of less than 5000 people. But some of the biggest banks such as the Central Republican National Bank and Trust Company still received $90 million. In the end however, all of Hoover’s actions were too little and too late so a lot of it didn’t really make a huge impact and it didn’t improve people’s lives during the Depression.
To a large extent, Roosevelt was responsible for his election victory in 1932 because of all the actions he took and although there are still some other factors that helped Roosevelt win the election, it was largely due to the measures he took to improve the lives of ordinary Americans.
