How Far Was Roosevelt Himself Responsible for his Election Victory in 1932?

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How Far Was Roosevelt Himself Responsible for his Election Victory in 1932?

In the 1932 presidential election, Franklin Delano Roosevelt won by the biggest landslide victory in a record number of years – by 7 million votes. But he cannot be credited for all of the votes: I think that he was only responsible for his victory to a certain extent. People favoured his personality, his character, his campaign and definitely his policies. But many other people only voted for Roosevelt because of negative cohesion: they strongly disliked Hoover. So although a lot of people voted for Roosevelt because they liked him, a lot of people voted for him because they disliked Hoover.

In 1932, in the aftermath of Wall Street Crash, the USA was left in a huge mess. The problems of America during the 1920s and 1930s contributed to Roosevelt’s victory. Hoover, who had won the previous election, had failed to address these problems in a beneficial way, and therefore the Americans were apprehensive of voting him in for another term. Roosevelt’s dynamic personality provided a fresh change for the American population – his attitude clashed significantly with the self-help and laissez-faire beliefs of Hoover. Many historians believe that it was more a case of the Republicans losing as oppose to the Democrats winning.

Herbert Hoover was born in 1874. He struck rich in the mining business, and when he was 40 he decided to go into politics. Hoover’s Republican Party was responsible for the economic boom, which gave prosperity to his people. So it’s a surprise that they didn’t vote him in again. However his party was also in power during the Depression – and his failure to deal with the colossal problems was essentially one of the reasons why Roosevelt was voted into office in 1923. During the Depression, all the positive feelings towards Hoover disappeared. Many poverty-stricken families found themselves seeking shelter in shanty towns (nicknamed “Hoovervilles”).

Hoover’s laissez-faire views led people to believe that the government were not acting at all on the situation. Hoover’s feeble attempts to relieve the problems didn’t work – the Emergency Relief and Reconstruction Act failed, the Hawley-Smoot tariff on taxing imports backfired, and the relief simply wasn’t enough. Hoover had a very self-help orientated attitude: he believed that social security wasn’t the responsibility of the government’s. His delayed response forced the people to believe that the government just didn’t care.  The Republicans feared that if they provided too much help to the people, they would become less independent and less willing to work. Hoover believed that too much state intervention would destroy America’s self-reliance and spirit. Hoover’s policy of “rugged individualism” (that Americans had plenty of opportunity to help themselves without having to rely on the government) was not what the people needed at that stage – they desperately needed someone who would intervene, who would help put an end to the mass poverty and unemployment in America and put the people back on their feet again.

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        The Republican policies had worked during the 1920s, so they weren’t completely useless. They contributed to the economic boom in America, which led to the growing of cities, the introduction of the car to normal day life, entertainment people couldn’t even imagine, more money circling the economy. These policies land marked America as one of the most, if not the most developed country in the whole world at the time. But after the Wall Street Crash, these laissez-faire policies just didn’t work. The people desperately needed government intervention. The Republicans only reacted at the end of 1930, which was too ...

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