Posted by
ApolloSpeaks on Monday, March 16, 2009 10:52:10 AM
Have I lost my mind? The Great Depression occurred in the 1930s started by the tax, spend and protectionist policies of progressive Republican President Herbert Hoover and prolonged by FDR’s Keynesian tax and spend New Deal extravaganza.
But what if Roosevelt in 1920 had gotten his wish and convinced the immensely popular Herbert Hoover to run for the Democratic presidential nomination with himself as running mate (see note 1)? What if FDR’s dream ticket had materialized and he and Hoover went on to defeat Harding and Coolidge in the general election, what then? How would these two progressives have dealt with the great recession caused by the war and Woodrow Wilson? A recession with 11.7% unemployment, declining Federal tax receipts and rising deficits and debt? Would they have slashed the top tax rates like Harding and Coolidge did from 73% to 25% and unleashed America‘s productive energies causing the roaring, soaring prosperous 20s? Would that have been their plan for economic recovery? Not on your life! Not even if they had Andrew Mellon at Treasury-the architect of the Harding/Coolidge miracle. On the contrary, a Hoover/Roosevelt Administration would have ignored Mellon’s sagacious theory that less taxation generates more government revenues; raising tax rates even higher they would have sent the economy into a worse tailspin bringing on the Great Hoover-Roosevelt Depression a decade sooner.
Good thing for FDR and the nation that the very popular and respected Hoover resisted his political advances, otherwise he would never have been President; and we would have been deprived of a great and gifted wartime leader in the existential struggle with Nazism, Fascism and Japanese Militarism.
Notes
1. With support from Woodrow Wilson who wanted Hoover for his successor FDR’s people tried to talk Hoover into joining the Democratic Party and run for the presidency (Hoover was unaffiliated at the time). But Hoover refused and became a Republican instead.