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FDR, New Deals, and the

Limits of Power

H

erbert Hoover, fairly or not, received blame for the Great Depression,
so even though he was running for president in 1932 it was obvious that
he had little chance to be re-elected. And on November 8th, Americans over-
whelming voted him out of office. His opponent enjoyed the largest margin
in U.S. history up to that time, carrying 42 states worth 472 electoral votes,
and over 57 percent of the popular vote, while the incumbent won only 6
states worth 59 electoral votes and under 40 percent of the people’s votes. It
would now be up to Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt [FDR] of New York
to find some way out of the deepest economic crisis in American history.

FDR and the Rescue of Capitalism

The Great Depression confirmed the predictions of many critics of Capitalism.
Communists had been claiming that a system built on the private ownership
of production and banks by a tiny percentage of wealthy Americans who got
rich off the labor of low-paid and often impoverished masses could not last
long. Even those who were Capitalist, but devised a new form of political
economy known as “corporatism,” or more commonly fascism had issued
warnings about a possible collapse of the U.S. economy. No matter what ide-
ology one held, it was clear that there were limits to Capitalism, and FDR’s