Herbert Hoover, the last Progressive President

[Recursion]

Or, how DU greatly oversimplifies history and anachronistically projects current political divides onto the past.

In 1912, Hoover endorsed Teddy Roosevelt's "Bull Moose" Progressive run.

In 1917, Wilson (the only Progressive Democrat of the era) picked Hoover to run the newly-created Food Administration. Using the Grain Corporation (a corporate-government partnership which was typical of Progressive policies) he reshaped American agriculture; it was rechartered as the American Relief Agency after WWI and sold grain directly to the Soviet commissar for foreign trade.

In a typically Progressive stance, as Commerce Secretary he promoted the idea of "associationalism", under which government, corporations, and civic groups cooperated and partnered to solve social and economic problems. What was probably considered his most Progressive accomplishment was successfully urging many industries to adopt uniform standards of manufacture, trade, transport, etc. (This was at the time seen as a less corruptable practice than government legislation.)

In 1928 he ran an anti-Catholic campaign against Smith (being anti-Catholic was, at the time, very Progressive)

The failure of associationalism to prevent the Great Depression was largely considered the final nail in the coffin of Progressivism (though the failure of Prohibition to prevent alcohol consumption would have to be a close second).

FDR's campaign in 1932 railed against "Progressive interference with businesses" and "government intervention in the economy". FDR himself would chart a much different course of government management, in which huge government provisioning requirements would establish large corporate actors that came to take on the role of quasi-public utilities.

FDR was the man who killed the Progressive Era. Hoover was the last President of that era. To see DU lament the lack of "true Progressives like FDR", or complain about "corporatist" influence in the Democratic party (corporations became much more powerful under the New Deal than they ever were under associationalism) is... well... I'm not sure what it is, but it's a sign that we can't take political names and slogans at face value.

Who resurrected the name "Progressive", anyways, given its history? When did it start being applied to liberals, and by whom? The earliest I remember was Carville's book We're Right and They're Wrong: A Handbook for Spirited Progressives, but when I saw that the use of "Progressive" didn't seem novel so it must have been earlier than that.

[denem]

1. Herbert Hoover sucked.

[newscott]

3. Dubya sucked worse.

[denem]

4. Though they haven't named an appliance after GWB yet.

[DJ13]

6. I thought the Douche Nozzle was named after W?

[w4rma]

2. FDR ran as a conservative. (nt)

[denem]

5. FDR ran on a platform to balance the budget.

The 'New Deal' was a fuzzy if warm slogan, along the lines of Change we can believe in.

[Recursion]

7. And a lot of it was just kind of flailing about "throw something until it sticks" ad-hocery

But, if the New Deal had a unifying idea, I'd have to say it was "consolidation" in both public and private space.

[cali]

8. revisionist history. again.

[Recursion]

10. How?

Herbert called himself a Progressive. He just did. Contemporaries called him a Progressive. Roosevelt complained that Hoover was a Progressive and that's why people should vote for Roosevelt instead.

[SheilaT]

9. Hoover apparently believed that the

market was god, and if you left everything alone prosperity would return. Unemployment went up to around 25% by 1932, even though no one was keeping accurate statistics then. I believe Hoover promised more of the same, while Roosevelt clearly saw something had to be done.

It's current revisionist history to try to claim that what FDR did made no difference to the economy, but that is every bit as wrong as the revisionism that the Civil War was not about slavery. People my age -- I'm 62 -- had parents who got jobs through the WPA, which by the way built roads and public buildings which are still in use today. Often those parents were teens back then, and they sent money home so the rest of the family wouldn't starve.

You can only call Hoover a Progressive by a strange inversion of that term.

[Recursion]

11. Well, no

Hoover apparently believed that the market was god

Well, no, that's just not true. That's taking current Republican attitudes and assuming historical Republicans had them. He didn't believe in bailing out failed companies -- there's a lot of sympathy for that view on the Left, too. FDR's 1928 campaign complained that Hoover was interfering too much in the economy, not that he wasn't doing enough.

It's current revisionist history to try to claim that what FDR did made no difference to the economy

I agree that view is out there, though I have no idea how people take it seriously.

You can only call Hoover a Progressive by a strange inversion of that term.

If by "strange inversion" you mean "actual use of the term at the time", ok. He was called a progressive. He called himself a progressive. Hell, it was the damn Progressive Era. The meaning of that does seem to be different from today, which I pointed out at the bottom of the post (and asked why it got resurrected, and by whom, and for what reason).