T5 Political Flashcards
(18 cards)
1
Q
The 1920 Republican Candidates
A
- The Republican candidates chosen to fight the 1920 presidential election reflected the search for
stability and reassurance. - Warren G. Harding, from Ohio, presented an image of calm reasonableness.
- Harding’s running mate, Calvin Coolidge, was a sternly respectable politician from Massachusetts,
who had achieved fame and popularity by breaking the 1919 Boston Police Strike and was known
to be a friend of Big Business. - One effective Republican campaign poster in 1920 showed Coolidge next to the slogan ‘Law and
Order’, side by side with Harding and the slogan ‘American First’.
2
Q
Renewed Isolationism and the Rejection of Wilsonism
A
- When Wilson returned from the Paris Peace Conference in the summer of 1919, he found a
changed national mood. - He campaigned hard for American acceptance of the League of Nations but ran into strong
opposition. - The longer ratification of the Versailles Treaty was delayed, the less likely it was to happen at all.
- There were several different strands of opposition to ‘Wilsonism’.
(1) There was war weariness, made worse by the long months of diplomatic wrangling in Paris.
(2) Domestic political concerns occupied people’s minds.
(3) Some of the opposition came from committed isolationists such as Senator William Borah of
Idaho, a key member of the group opposing Wilson known as the ‘Irreconcilables’. Borah’s
speech to the Senate in November 1919 played an important part in deciding the vote against
ratification of the League of Nations. - Key Personalities influenced the debate like Henry Cabot Lodge, Senator for Massachusetts, who
was the most prominent of the ‘Irreconcilables’. - Senator Lodge was not an isolationist – for years he had wanted the US to act like a world power.
- But Senator Lodge was not willing to see American power merged into an international
organisation like the League of Nations. - Senator Lodge was also a Republican and his clash of wills with the Democratic President Wilson,
was as much about politics, as well as ideals and personalities.
3
Q
Wilson’s Stroke
A
- Wilson’s own stubborn unwillingness to make political compromises weakened his chances of
getting ratification through Congress. - Many observers commentated on his obstinacy and how he was alienating political party allies.
- His unbending approach was also made worse by illness due to stress and exhaustion.
- Wilson went from stress, to illness, to tragedy. He insisted on making a lengthy tour of the country
to make a direct appeal to the people over the heads of the politicians in Washington. - In September 1919, after a speech in Pueblo, Colorado, Wilson suffered a serious stroke and
collapsed. - His chances of winning support, for ratification, or of going on to win a third term as president in
1920, were badly hit.
4
Q
The 1920 Election
A
- The 1920 Presidential Election is too often presented as a surprising change of course, perhaps
because Woodrow Wilson held such international prestige in 1919. - In reality, the political tide was already turning towards a Republican victory, even before Wilson’s
troubles with the ratification of the Versailles Treaty, and his ill-health, weakened his position. - From 1896 there was a sustained period of Republican political domination that lasted until 1932,
when Hoover lost power because of the Great Depression. - Woodrow Wilson’s years in the White House were exceptional, largely made possible by the
Republican splits made in 1912 between Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. - Although Wilson did manage to hold the presidency in 1916, the election was close-run.
- In the 1918 mid-term elections, the Republicans gained many seats in the House of
Representatives and the Senate. - The political arithmetic indicated that the Democrats would struggle in 1920, whoever the
candidates were. - In the event, Harding paid little attention to his direct official Democratic opponent, James Cox.
- Harding instead directed all his attacks against Woodrow Wilson. Strangely, Woodrow Wilson
remained unshakably convinced that James Cox would win, but hardly anyone else shared his
opinion. - The Harding-Coolidge team won decisively. Cox and Roosevelt won few states outside the ‘Solid
South’. Republican dominance was restored.
5
Q
Republican Dominance & Policies (1921 - 1933)
A
- The Republicans monopolised the White House in the 1920s with three successive presidents.
- They were Warren Harding: 1921 – 1923; Calvin Coolidge: 1923 – 1929 & Herbert Hoover: 1929 –
1933 - Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover have generally been given a bad press by historians because of the
lack of domestic reform and reversion to a policy of isolationism.
6
Q
Republican Policies (1921 - 1933)
A
- Return to ‘Normalcy’ (Isolationism/Rejection of Progressivism).
- Limited Government (Government Spending Cuts).
- Low Taxation (‘The business of America is business’).
- Laissez-Faire (No regulation of Businesses).
- Tariffs (Protect American Industry).
- Rugged Individualism (Self-Reliance).
7
Q
Warren Harding (1921 – 1923)
A
- Harding was a surprising choice as Republican candidate for the presidential election campaign of
1920 but won a landslide victory. - Harding’s victory remains the largest popular-vote percentage margin (60.3 per cent to 34.1 per
cent) in presidential elections after the so-called ‘Era of Good Feelings’ ended with the victory of
James Monroe in the election of 1820.
8
Q
Harding’s Successes
A
- He made a number of able appointments including Andrew Mellon as Secretary of State for the
Treasury, Herbert Hoover as Secretary of Commerce and Charles Hughes as Secretary of State. - The Sheppard–Towner Maternity Aid Act was passed which provided federal aid to states to
encourage them to build infant and maternity health centres. - Harding was successful in making cuts to government spending. For example, the Budget and
Accounting Act made departments present budgets to the president for approval. Government
spending, which totalled $5,000 million in 1920, had fallen to $3,333 million by 1922. - He did try to make government more efficient. For example, he addressed Congress on several
occasions calling for an increased federal government role in the economic and social life of the
nation. - His belief in very limited federal government intervention reflected the popular mood of the
nation at that time. - Harding also achieved his aim, which was to return to a situation where there was as little
government as possible – the return to normalcy.
9
Q
Harding’s Failures
A
- Harding is, however, often described as one of the weakest and least effective presidents.
- His own personal reputation was tainted by extramarital affairs, at least two of which were made
public. - He achieved very little due to his belief in ‘normalcy’ and a return to the very limited government
intervention of the nineteenth century. - Harding made some very dubious appointments including some of his ‘Ohio Gang’ cronies. In
1923, it emerged that there had been extensive corruption during Harding’s administration. - The Head of the Veterans’ Bureau, for example, had misappropriated or wasted $250 million, and
the Alien Property Custodian had accepted bribes. - The most infamous example was the Teapot Dome scandal.
10
Q
The Teapot Dome Scandal
A
- This involved the secret leasing of federal oil reserves by the Secretary of the Interior, Albert
Bacon Fall, during Harding’s presidency. - In April 1922, Fall secretly granted to Harry F. Sinclair of the Mammoth Oil Company exclusive
rights to the Teapot Dome (Wyoming) reserves. - When the affair became known, Congress forced Harding to cancel the leases.
- In addition, the Supreme Court declared the leases fraudulent and ruled illegal Harding’s transfer
of authority to Fall. - Harding was not directly implicated in the scandal although it did take a toll on his health.
- The scandal, however, had little effect on the popularity of the Republicans, reflected in the
overwhelming victory of Coolidge in the 1924 presidential election. - Nevertheless, like Watergate in the 1970s, ‘Teapot Dome’ became synonymous with scandal and
corruption in government.
11
Q
Calvin Coolidge (1923 – 1929)
A
- Harding died on 2 August 1923 and Coolidge, who had been his vice-president, was sworn in as
president. In the presidential election of the following year, Coolidge won a decisive victory. - He was given credit for a booming economy at home and isolationist policy abroad which had
begun under Harding and continued under Coolidge in his first year as president. - Coolidge was helped by a split within the Democratic Party.
- The regular Democratic candidate was John W. Davis, a little-known former congressman.
- However, Davis was a conservative, which encouraged many liberal Democrats to leave the party
and back the third-party campaign of Wisconsin Senator Robert M. LaFollette, Sr., who ran as the
candidate of the Progressive Party.
12
Q
Coolidge’s Successes
A
- Coolidge liked to be thought of as a man of the people, especially those of small-town America.
- He had very nineteenth-century views, believing in as little government intervention as possible.
- ‘The business of America is business’, he said. Although criticised for doing and saying very little
during his term in office, he made more speeches and met more people than any of his
predecessors. - Coolidge enjoyed being seen in public and was a popular president because he exuded confidence
and appeared calm and unflappable. - He was honest and incorruptible, unlike other presidents, and did not smoke, drink or chase
women. He was seen as the dependable pilot at the helm. - His election victory of 1924 led to an extension of Republican pro-business policies, with low
taxation, low interest rates and minimum government spending.
13
Q
Coolidge’s Failures
A
- Historians have criticised Coolidge for his low work rate. He slept a lot and said very little, being
nicknamed ‘Silent Cal’. - Some believe that he suffered a severe depression in 1924 after the death of his son.
- To some he had a superiority complex and, although acknowledging that the USA had problems,
did very little to address them. - As president he was determined to do less, rather than more, than his predecessor.
- Coolidge refused to stand as president in 1928 due to health concerns.
14
Q
The 1928 Election
A
- President Coolidge voluntarily declined to run again in 1928.
- The Republican succession ran smoothly to the capable and experienced Herbert Hoover, who
won the election decisively, defeating the Democratic candidate, Al Smith. - Republican political dominance seemed stronger than ever, holding the presidency and
controlling both the House and the Senate in Congress. - Some political commentators even suggested that the Democratic Party might be finished forever.
- Above all Herbert Hoover and the Republican Party benefited by the ongoing boom years.
- In the 1928 presidential campaign Hoover boasted about ‘A Chicken in every pot and a car in every
garage.’ - In his acceptance speech accepting the Republican nomination in 1928, Hoover went as far as to
claim: ‘We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the
history of any land’.
15
Q
Al Smith
A
- Al Smith was four times governor of New York, elected in 1918, 1922, 1924 and 1926.
- Smith’s immigrant, working class origins (as a Catholic, with an Irish mother and an Italian-German
father) and his stance as a Progressive, and a ‘wet’, gained strong support from voters in the cities. - He ran for the presidency in 1928 (his political ally Franklin Delano Roosevelt replaced him as
governor) but was defeated by Herbert Hoover. - Smith expected to run again in 1932 but lost the Democratic nomination to Roosevelt – Smith
never spoke to Roosevelt again. - The political career of Al Smith demonstrated the power of religion in American politics.
- Smith was an impressive politician, but his Catholicism was a huge handicap.
- In 1928, Smith out-polled Herbert Hoover in big cities and won many states in the North and East
but was rejected by rural Protestants around the country. - Anti-Catholicism undermined Smith within his own party – he lost traditional Democratic
stronghold of the ‘Solid South’. - No Catholic won the presidency until John F. Kennedy in 1960.
16
Q
Herbert Hoover’s Initial Reputation
A
- When Herbert Hoover was inaugurated as president in 1929, the rising stock market was taken as
proof of the unstoppable prosperity and economic power of the United States. - Almost no-one foresaw a financial crisis around the corner; and if one were to happen, almost
everyone would have considered Herbert Hoover the ideal man to deal with it. - By 1928, Herbert Hoover already had an impressive record in public life; he was known as ‘the
Great Engineer’. - Hoover had earned great praise for his work organising emergency relief schemes during and after
the First World War. - From 1921, he was an effective and well-respected Secretary of Commerce in the Harding
administration. - When he became president in 1929, it was widely assumed that Hoover would be a great success.
- The reality was that Hoover spent virtually all his time in office grappling with the financial crisis
and the Great Depression. - His career ended in failure and disillusionment when the Republicans were catastrophically
defeated by FDR in the 1932 elections.
17
Q
Hoover and the Great Depression
A
- In one sense, the defeat in the ‘turning point’ election of 1932 had little to do with Herbert
Hoover. - The problems of the world depression were such that every single democratic government that
held power in 1929 was swept away by 1932. - Whoever had been president from 1929 would have gone down to defeat as Hoover did.
- At the time, however, there was no shortage of people ready to place blame on Hoover.
- By 1932 his name had become a term of abuse. ‘Hoover blankets’ were the newspapers homeless
people covered themselves with; ‘Hoover shoes’ were carboard inserted into shoes to cover holes
in the sole of the shoe; ‘Hoovervilles’ were the shanty towns of the unemployed. - These perceptions of Hoover proved very durable; they lasted through the years of the New Deal
and into the post-war years. - The origins of the Great Depression were to be found in the long-term problems that already
existed before 1929 and were concealed by the outward prosperity of the 1920s boom years. - The boom peaked between 1927 and 1929, leading to the sudden financial collapse of the Wall
Street Crash in October 1929. - It is important to note that the Great Depression was not an instant consequence of the Wall
Street Crash but emerged only gradually from October 1929, it did not become ‘the Great
Depression’ until mid-1931.
18
Q
Hoover Historical Revisionism
A
- Hoover’s reputation was badly battered between 1930 and 1932.
- For fifty years after that, there was a consensus that the New Deals of the 1930s had saved
America from the consequences of Hoover’s mistaken policies. - Since the 1980s historians have reassessed Hoover’s role, partly because right-wing Conservative
ideas came back into fashion with Ronal Reagan, and partly because historians have been
influenced by new interpretations of the effectiveness of government intervention in the
economy.
