Letter? I Never Got Any Letter, Herbert.
Before his Inaugural, FDR craftily dodged attempts to saddle him with Hoover's crisis. What Obama can learn.
By Jonathan Alter | NEWSWEEK
Published Nov 22, 2008
Americans are scared and eager for change. They elect the Democratic presidential candidate by a healthy margin, in part because they prefer his temperament. But the outcome is, to most, largely a rejection of the brutal status quo. Every day brings more depressing economic news, with banks teetering and foreclosures skyrocketing. During the transition, the outgoing president tries to rope the new man into the crisis—but the president-elect keeps his distance. The country has only one president at a time, he says, telling aides that he doesn't want responsibility without authority.
Abraham Lincoln is Barack Obama's favorite president, but it's no wonder he's reading up on Franklin D. Roosevelt. The similarities between 1932–33 and 2008–09 are eerie. And the basic questions during the transition are the same today as they were 76 years ago: How low will the economy sink? Is it better for the incoming president to pitch in with the outgoing administration to forestall disaster—or hang loose? What's the best way to plan for the early weeks after the Inauguration?
Of course, the economy was worse then. Unemployment was 25 percent, compared with 6.5 percent today; the stock market was down 90 percent, not the 40-plus percent of 2008. Unlike Obama, FDR defeated an incumbent, Herbert Hoover, and the bitterness between them (to the point that they were shouting at each other on the eve of the Inauguration) was far greater than the enmity between Obama and President Bush.
The sequencing of the crisis is also different. In the early 1930s the economy collapsed first, setting off a banking crisis. Today it's a banking crisis that might precipitate an economic collapse. Where Hoover launched a modest intervention in the economy called the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson are investing taxpayer money much more heavily. But in both cases, Republican presidents refused to directly help Americans who were losing their homes. Their Democratic successors took a different view of the American social contract.
Like Obama in Chicago, FDR was in a serious mood on the night of his election. "I'm just afraid I may not have the strength to do the job," he told his son, who was helping the paralyzed president-elect into bed. "Pray for me, Jimmy." But FDR was so eager to take office that he briefly concocted a scheme whereby Hoover would appoint him secretary of state, then Hoover would resign along with his vice president, Charles Curtis. This would allow Roosevelt to be president immediately instead of waiting four long months until March 4, the date of the Inaugural in those days. (After 1933 it was changed to Jan. 20.) The gambit went nowhere.
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http://www.newsweek.com/id/170363
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