Why did Roosevelt win the 1932 election?

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Fiona Crookshank                                                                       Roosevelt Coursework

Question 3: Why did Roosevelt win the 1932 election?

The 1932 election was the 'Depression election'. America was in turmoil because of the 1929 stockmarket crash and then going into the Depression. America needed help! Many people had lost their homes, jobs and their money. By 1932 America were in an economic crisis. There was massive political discontent. It was against this background that the 1932 elections took place. The two candidates, which were competing, were Herbert Clark Hoover, who was a Republican and was already president at the time, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was a Democrat and was the governor of New York at the time. I am going to explain how Herbert Hoovers response of "Rugged individualism" towards the depression made him unpopular, and how Roosevelt's response of the "Forgotten man" made him very popular and in the end made him the president of the United States Of America.

Born in1874, Herbert Hoover lost both his parents before he was eleven years old. Brought up by his uncles he left school to become an office boy and at 18 went to university where he worked hard and became a well respected mining engineer and humanitarian administrator . As a United States Commerce Secretary in the 1920s under Presidents Harding and Coolidge, he promoted economic modernization and became an important figure amoungst the government and Republican Party. In the presidential election of 1928 Hoover had easily won the Republican nomination and the nation was prosperous and optimistic, leading to a landslide for Hoover over Democrat Al Smith. Hoover deeply believed in the , arguing that there were technical solutions to all social and economic problems. However that position was challenged by the , which began in 1929, the first year of his presidency. He energetically tried to combat the depression with many new programs, but none of them worked since he and Congress failed to acknowledge the disastrous effects of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930, which throttled US trade, engendered retaliatory tariffs, and began a cascade of international bank failures.

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Hoover was a strong believe in self-help and ‘rugged individualism’, meaning, that individuals could achieve success through their own hard work and effort (as he had done since a young boy) an he believed in carrying on this belief within politics.

In Hoover’s 1932 election campaign he promised a great ‘ turnaround’ leading to the return of prosperity to the damaged state of America and believed in giving businesses the chance to bring an end to the depression without the interference from the government. He thought that too much help from the government would damage the self-reliance of America ...

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