The Republican Message in the Herbert Hoover campaign

[katmondoo]

was a chicken in every pot. Mitt can campaign on "an elevator in every garage" and caviar on every cracker. Should do wonders for his ratings.

[Angry Dragon]

1. and a Cadillac for everyone

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

2. And a dressage horse in every barn

If you don't have a barn you're SOL.

[calimary]

3. And a chickenhawk in every White House.

[lastlib]

4. and a dog on every roof.

[Jim Lane]

5. I thought this thread was going to be about balanced budgets and investor "confidence".

Hoover, faced with high unemployment, denounced proposals for major public works programs and federal deficit spending to provide immediate relief. In a May 21, 1932 letter to the President of the American Society of Civil Engineers, which had recommended such a program, Hoover inveighed against it. He concluded:

To sum up. It is generally agreed that the balancing of the Federal budget and unimpaired national credit is indispensable to the restoration of confidence and to the very start of economic recovery. The Administration and Congress have pledged themselves to this end. A "public works" program such as is suggested by your committee and by others, through the issuance of Federal bonds creates at once an enormous further deficit.

What is needed is the return of confidence and a capital market through which credit will flow in the thousand rills with its result of employment and increased prices. That confidence will be only destroyed by action in these directions. These channels will continue clogged by fears if we continue attempts to issue large amounts of government bonds for purposes of non-productive works.

The full text of the letter is available here.

You'll note that this is what Paul Krugman currently refers to as the "confidence fairy" theory of economics. Hoover's message in 1932 was the same as Romney's today -- balance the federal budget and count on the private sector to somehow restore us to prosperity.

The experience of the 1930s and 1940s conclusively disproved this view and established instead the correctness of Keynes's analysis -- that, when the economy is depressed, the government must jump-start the recovery by engaging in deficit spending, which will increase aggregate demand.

As for the "chicken in every pot" thing in 1928, that was, according to the Hoover Archives, not a Hoover campaign promise. The phrase is from a Republican National Committee advertisement that lauded the accomplishments of Harding and Coolidge, the two Republicans who had served the two preceding presidential terms and who had allegedly already achieved this goal. Source: http://hoover.archives.gov/info/faq.html#chicken