The Great Depression Created Modern Politics | Hoover, the Roaring Twenties, and FDR
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- čas přidán 23. 07. 2024
- In this episode, we talk about how the Great Depression brought about the end of America’s Fourth Party System and Populist and Progressive Era, ushering in our modern political party system under Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal.
By the 1920s, the political debates of the Populist and Progressive Era were over. America was no longer an industrializing country struggling with how to adapt to a new economy. It was an industrialized country with factories, cities, and automobiles. All the reforms America had been fighting about during its Fourth Party System were now either implemented or no longer relevant.
America was now a great power enjoying its prosperity. This was the Roaring Twenties.
As you might expect, and as usually happens when an old political debate gets resolved, politics went into decline. The parties no longer had urgent agendas to advance. America was distracted. Corruption started creeping into the system, creating the presidency of Warren Harding and Teapot Dome. Then, in 1929, the stock market crashed and everything unraveled.
Herbert Hoover was the unfortunate president who had to contend with the resulting depression. This Great Depression was the worst economic calamity America ever faced. With unemployment reaching nearly twenty-five percent and industrial production cut in half, those former middle class flappers were now living in squatter camps called Hoovervilles relying on soup kitchens to eat. A lot of Americans started to lose faith in the American system of government itself.
Hoover, a Fourth Party System progressive Republican who supported Teddy Roosevelt’s third party run in 1912, was outmatched. He tried to cushion to blow of the Depression as America waited out the bust, but it was too little and too late. By 1932, America was eager to throw him and his party out of office to elected a Democrat, New York Governor Franklin Roosevelt, who promised them a “new deal.”
The Republican Party was now so widely reviled it would take decades for it to recover. But Roosevelt could no longer rely on the ideology of his Democratic Party either. If he was to avoid the same fate as Hoover, he had to innovate.
America’s Fourth Party System was over. It was time again for something new.
Roosevelt collected a groups of academics and policy advisers, empowering them to launch an ambitious and radical agenda. This New Deal would create a completely new ideology for the Democratic Party unlike anything that existed before. Those who opposed this agenda naturally found themselves pushed into the husk of the Republican Party, where they too would develop a new ideology in response.
A new Fifth Party System began, our current system of New Deal liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans. Over the next episodes, we’ll explore how that transition came to be.
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This is probably the best and most important series on all of youtube right now.
Thank you!
Most understated channel on CZcams. The next realignment is Franks popularity.
Thanks James. I hope you’re right!
Awesome! The New Deal Liberalism that survived so well until it collapsed with Richard Nixon’s Landslide in 1972. I would argue that starting from there was a new party system talking about issues such as suburbanization, deindustrialization, and cultural changes.
I argue (as most scholars say) we're still in the Fifth Party System New Deal Era now. This is system that's collapsing.
What happened between the late 1960s and 1980 was an critical change in politics, but not a realignment. Essentially, we added new social and moral concerns to the pragmatic economic ones of FDR's time like taxes, labor, and regulations. It didn't create a realignment because the core ideologies remained the same. Democrats continued to believe in all the FDR issues and his entire New Deal liberal philosophy, that we can use expertise and planning (meaning progressivism) to benefit working people, the marginalized, and least well off (meaning populism). They simply extended it into new social issues, which of course caused massive changes in the party's tone and demographics. While Republicans continued to fight "big government," but now looked to fight social "big government" alongside economic "big government."
The core ideologies thus remained the same. But the knock-off affects were huge.
But I'll be talking more about all that in later episodes.
And thanks for watching!
@@FrankDiStefano Interesting Perspective! I still think that there was a major change since there was a dealignment of White Working Class Southern Democrats from the New Deal Coalition. That movement caused a significant shift in the Republican Party favor with the Presidency/Electoral College Politics for the decades to come. Once the Republican Party was the Party of the North/Cities became the Party of the South and Rural/Suburban America. Thanks for the content though! I will be watching more!
exceptionally underrated
I really enjoy this channel. I never thought of american history in such a way. I hope you keep making videos. Im gonna send them to my friends. I imagine some highschool history teachers would really enjoy this as a means to show their students how everything fits together.
Even if you dont get alot of views, i really hope you keep it up.
Thanks a lot. I really appreciate the comment!
I'm so happy you are making this series. Thank you.
Thanks for watching!
Great explanation about the ideology of the parties. Can’t wait for the explanation of how this developed into what we have today. Keep up the good work👍🏼👍🏼
You forgot the crisis of 1919 that nobody ever talks about when you listed the different financial crisis
I was waiting for this. Cannot wait for when you talk about modern day. I wonder if you would do a political realignment podcast (know you've been on several podcasts) with people of different political perspectives
I'd love to do more podcasts. If you know anyone who would be a good fit, let me know!
Oddly enough there is already a podcast about today’s realignment. It is called “The Realignment” by Saager Enjeti and Marshall Kosloff. It is on Apple Podcasts. Plus, they talk about it often on the show “Rising”
With Krystal Ball.
They have an interesting discussion about the movement of working class Americans to the Republicans and the upper-middle class to wealthy class to the Democrats.
@@12KevinPower I didn't know saager had a podcast about this. Where in the world have I been? Is it anywhere else other than apple podcasts? I'm on the hunt.
"So, Hoover, like a lot of people, naturally assumed that the job was to just wait out the crisis and things would right themselves eventually as it always had before. So, Hoover used the power of his office to try and cushion the blow..." That doesn't make sense the way you put it. If he figured the proper thing to do was to wait it out, then why did he do anything at all? And if the supposed solution was to do what Hoover did but more, then why did the Great Depression last so long even after all this was done?
I love his videos, however its a BIG stretch to call Herbert Hoover a progressive as of 1929. Also another aspect not much talked about is that the farmers had been living in a kind of depression since the early 20s. Also the bonus army crack down destroyed Hoover's legacy as it should have. It was deplorable. He is a smart and accomplished man, however he did fail to see the significance of the depression.
Hoover's reputation is contentious, particularly given how much an entire American generation hated him for the Depression followed by decades of Democratic Party attacks started by FDR, who loathed Hoover personally. Now that the air has cleared a bit, however, there's a lot of newer scholarship reassessing Hoover and his beliefs. For example, I recommend Ken Whyte's Hoover: An Extraordinary Life. I agree with this view that Hoover, like Grant, was in fact better than his reputation suggests.
I see Hoover as simply trying to follow with the same progressive beliefs he held throughout his life. I don't think he had some sudden ideological transformation. I think the ground shifted under him, as well as with what "progressive" meant, after FDR. No doubt he wasn't nearly as aggressive as FDR in using government to fight the Depression, but it's important to recognize FDR's was a radical change in direction even for progressives. And while Hoover was clearly pro business, so were most historical progressives. The movement flourished after all among the professional class and the wealthy and was married politically to the McKinley-Coolidge wing of the party. There was conflict between them, as among all political factions in a party, but they still saw themselves as part of the same team.
That's my take on it. And thanks for watching!