Word: hooverisms
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Before the White House portico Mr. Roosevelt kept his seat in the car, waited a few minutes for President Hoover to join him for the ride up Capitol Hill. A lift of silk hats, a quick handshake, a few formal words and their greeting was over. With the country's most precious cargo behind, Richard Jervis, silvery-haired chief of the White House Secret Service, slipped into the front seat of the car, kept its door cracked and one hand on his pocketed pistol...
...good old word-work" was President Hoover's first prescription for meeting the Depression which crashed down upon the country in the fall of 1929. On his orders a potent army of industrialists, railmen, motormen, bankers, manufacturers, public utilitarians and labor leaders marched to the White House where they pledged "business-as-usual." More public works were planned to absorb unemployment. Private companies were urged to go in heavily for new construction. Income taxes were cut 1% to spur economic recovery...
Late last October when business did not bulge as expected, President Hoover started to prepare for a second winter of Unemployment and distress. His relief formula: Each community must rely on local charity and help itself, with not a penny from the Federal Treasury. Though nothing was to come from Washington but advice, sympathy and cooperation, President Hoover held another round of conferences. The public buildings program was pressed harder. Announced the President: "As a nation we must prevent hunger and cold to our citizens who are in honest difficulties...
This year President Hoover did not wait until late autumn before preparing for a hard winter. In June he inaugurated his moratorium plan as a world business stimulant. This he followed up by requesting all Community Chests, through their national organization, to survey joblessness, determine well in advance the "load of distress" they would have to meet. As before, he summoned Big Business to the White House for advice and comfort. Said he reassuringly, "The problem of Unemployment and Relief, whatever it may be, will be met." Before him loomed the A. F. of L.'s prediction...
...before it was over. NBC called the winner at 8:15 p.m. E.S.T., and the loser conceded while Americans were still standing in line at polling booths in much of the country. In a savage repudiation of a sitting President not seen since F.D.R. swept away Herbert Hoover in the midst of the Depression, Americans chose Ronald Wilson Reagan, at 69 the oldest man ever to be elected President, to replace Jimmy Carter...