Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt essays

Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt essays Herbert C. Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt were contemporaries and outstanding Americans of the first half of the 20th century who both rose to the highest political office of their country. They are, however, remembered in history for widely contrasting reasons. While Hoover was a one-term President who presided over the most serious economic crisis in the country's historythe Great DepressionRoosevelt is the only US President to have been elected 4 times and is gratefully remembered for having pulled his country out of the Depression. Some people believe that Hoover was unfairly held responsible for the Great Depression and they may well be right but there is no escaping the fact that some of his policies worsened the economic crisis and it was left to the outstanding leadership of FDR and his New Deal policies that lifted the spirits of a dejected nation and reversed the downward spiral of a seemingly endless recession. When the US stock market crashed[1] in October 1929 taking the wind out of the US economy, Herbert Hoover had been in office for less than a year; hence his Presidency cannot be held solely responsible for the downturn. Hoover, nonetheless, was unable to gauge the seriousness of the situation, believing that the problem was a temporary "business cycle" that would correct itself. Due to his shy personality, he could not impress the public with the need for calm or reverse the rising "tide of fear" about the future of the economy. (Leibovich 107). Hoover's policies did not help either as he stubbornly stuck to a policy of "balanced budgets" and proceeded to increase taxes and cut back governmental spending at a time when exactly the opposite monetary policy was required. Hoover's famous "rugged individualism" and his almost dogmatic belief in "mutual self-help and voluntary giving" prevented him from the need of the ho...