November 8, 1932: Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York is elected President of the United States, defeating the incumbent Republican, President Herbert Hoover. Due to the Great Depression, in just 4 years, Hoover went from winning 40 States to losing 42, from winning 444 Electoral Votes to 87 to losing 472 to 59, and from winning 58.2 percent of the popular vote to losing it 57.4 to 39.7.
This was not so much a hiring of FDR as it was a firing of Hoover. And, yes, Hoover can be blamed for how he handled the Depression: He didn't think he could do much, and the things that he did do, that worked a little, he should have done harder, and didn't. Indeed, much of FDR's New Deal was based not just on what he, and before him Al Smith, had done in the office of Governor of New York, but on some things Hoover did as President, like the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC).
But Hoover shouldn't be blamed for the Depression itself.
![]()
2. Wall Street Speculators. As we've seen, Greed is not good.
1. Andrew Mellon. Appointed Secretary of the Treasury by Warren Harding, and kept all through the Coolidge years and most of Hoover's term, America's 3rd-richest man (behind John D. Rockefeller and Henry Ford) was a Pittsburgh-based banking titan, whose name lives on after a merger with the Bank of New York: BNY Mellon. But he basically let big business do whatever it wanted.
![]()
As a poem of the time went:
This was not so much a hiring of FDR as it was a firing of Hoover. And, yes, Hoover can be blamed for how he handled the Depression: He didn't think he could do much, and the things that he did do, that worked a little, he should have done harder, and didn't. Indeed, much of FDR's New Deal was based not just on what he, and before him Al Smith, had done in the office of Governor of New York, but on some things Hoover did as President, like the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC).
But Hoover shouldn't be blamed for the Depression itself.
Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame Herbert Hoover for the Great Depression
5. No Oversight. There was a Federal Reserve Board, but there wasn't yet a Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) to keep stock traders honest, or a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to protect banks. Those would come with FDR's New Deal the next year.
4. The Farm Belt. It had already been in a depression since the end of World War I, 11 years earlier, because the armed forces, its biggest market, had shrunk back to prewar levels. It would take World War II to make the U.S. military-industrial complex big enough to be a permanent market for American agriculture, from meat and grain to dairy and vegetables.
3. Calvin Coolidge. Hoover's predecessor, possibly seeing the Crash of 1929 coming, said in 1927, "I do not choose to run for President in 1928." In layman's terms, he left Hoover holding the bag. No one blames the man who got a full term in 1924 on "Coolidge Prosperity" for the Crash that came less than 8 months after he left office. But they should.
Coolidge and Hoover
2. Wall Street Speculators. As we've seen, Greed is not good.
1. Andrew Mellon. Appointed Secretary of the Treasury by Warren Harding, and kept all through the Coolidge years and most of Hoover's term, America's 3rd-richest man (behind John D. Rockefeller and Henry Ford) was a Pittsburgh-based banking titan, whose name lives on after a merger with the Bank of New York: BNY Mellon. But he basically let big business do whatever it wanted.
Hoover blew the whistle
Mellon rang the bell
Wall Street gave the signal
and the country went to hell!
VERDICT: Not Guilty of causing the Depression, Guilty of the lesser (but still rotten) charge of making it worse than it had to be.