An Open Challenge to Rachel Maddow - Coordination Problem
Dear Ms. Maddow,
On your show of August 3rd, you argued that Herbert Hoover was responsible for the deepening of the Great Depression because of his commitment to what we would now call "austerity" and his refusal to act aggressively and use government spending to prop up the economy. Your portrayal of Hoover as a proto-Tea Partier committed to free markets and laissez-faire is, however, historically inaccurate.
One need only glance at Hoover's own writings to see your mistake. In his acceptance speech upon receiving the GOP nomination in 1932, he said: "We might have done nothing. That would have been utter ruin. Instead, we met the situation with proposals to private business and the Congress of the most gigantic program of economic defense and counter attack ever evolved in the history of the Republic." Over the course of that year, Hoover proposed a variety of new spending programs as well as the largest peacetime tax increase in US history. His set of programs foreshadowed the New Deal, and even FDR's advisor Rex Tugwell admitted: "When it was all over, I once made a list of New Deal ventures begun during Hoover’s years as secretary of commerce and then as president…. The New Deal owed much to what he had begun." Government spending over Hoover's presidency increased by 47%, hardly evidence of a refusal to act or a commitment to austerity. Of course the Smoot-Hawley tariff and a near-prohibition of immigration are hardly the acts of a man committed to small government. Finally, Hoover was convinced that maintaining high wages was the key to prosperity, and he successfully convinced major employers to not cut wages in the early 30s. The result, of course, was the 25% unemployment that characterized his presidency.
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