Herbert Hoover
Page 37
The war in Europe opened another opportunity for Hoover to lead a major effort in food relief and perhaps to step back into the national scene and reconcile with Roosevelt. Through intermediaries, Roosevelt issued an invitation to the former president to visit the White House to advise on food relief and perhaps assume personal control. Hoover was puzzled by the invitation and suspected the president’s motives. Hoover was involved in organizing another bid for the Republican nomination in 1940 and believed that FDR hoped to distract him from politics.18
Hoover probably misjudged the White House’s motivation. The real impetus came from Eleanor Roosevelt, who viewed it as a commonsense attempt to make use of Hoover and at least diminish the hostility between the rivals. The offer was relayed by Myron Taylor, who found the former president unreceptive and unwilling to go to Washington. Hoover told him such relief should be handled by the Red Cross, now much stronger than in 1927, when it had carried the major burden of Mississippi River flood relief in collaboration with Hoover. Erecting a new government bureaucracy when an infrastructure already existed would only delay relief, the former ARA chairman argued. Taylor was disappointed by the response, almost incredulous that Hoover would reject a long-coveted opportunity to emerge from exile, but he dutifully reported the conversation to FDR. A second emissary followed soon afterward: Norman Davis, a veteran diplomat, friend of both Roosevelt and Hoover, who now headed the American Red Cross. Davis bluntly told him that the task was beyond the resources of the Red Cross and invited Hoover to accept the offer. Instead, Hoover prepared an elaborate plan specifying how the Red Cross could consummate the project. Davis carried it back to the Red Cross board, which rejected the scheme as impractical. Of all those involved, Eleanor was the most disappointed. “Mr. Hoover turned us down,” she said. “He refused to call on the President.” It was an unfortunate misunderstanding. Hoover could have done extraordinary good for the famished, helped repair his own image, and feasibly opened the door to healing the animosity. Eleanor was more generous than some of the White House staff about Hoover’s motives for rejecting the overture. She felt his chief concern was not his own political ambitions, but keeping America out of war, which he believed clashed with White House policies.19
With the failure of Roosevelt’s initiative and the refusal of the Red Cross to act, the Polish government, to which Hoover remained a hero, appealed directly to the ex-president. This time he was more responsive, although the results were limited. Hoover turned to his old colleagues in the CRB, who, as usual, rallied to his cause. They agreed to create a skeleton organization, the Commission for Polish Relief. The committee established canteens to furnish two hundred thousand meals per day to hungry children. At rallies attended largely by Polish Americans, the group raised more than $1 million. Hoover’s modest relief effort soon acquired another client when the Soviets invaded Finland in early December of 1939. Hoover was eager to aid the Finns, inspired by a combination of his contempt for Moscow and his admiration of the Finns for retiring their World War I debt and for bravely resisting the overpowering onslaught, inflicting heavy casualties on the invaders. Hoover consulted with Davis and the Red Cross and offered to collaborate in the relief of Finland, but his offer was rejected. The entangled thicket of relief involved a tundra of turf wars and petty personal jealousies. To be sure, there were daunting practical problems as well.20
Roosevelt also showed a petty side. He rebuked Davis for allowing Hoover to preempt relief, which made the president look bad, he told the Red Cross chairman. The administration, in an attempt to embarrass Hoover, publicly released the account of Roosevelt’s approaches to Hoover to assume leadership of relief. Replying tit for tat, Hoover released his side of those negotiations. Somewhat surprisingly, most of the press sided with Hoover. The New York Journal-American termed the administration’s role “shoddy politics” and the Baltimore Sun called Roosevelt’s tactics “A Smear That Failed.” Newsweek was blunter still. “Few administrations in American history ever went to greater lengths to smear a predecessor than this one,” the magazine wrote.21
Hoover expanded rather than curtailed the scope of his relief activities after FDR’s 1940 reelection. He wanted to be useful, but on his own terms. FDR and Hoover both allowed pride and jealousy to cloud their better judgment. As the war expanded, Europe became overrun with refugees from the nations invaded and FDR obtained a congressional appropriation of $50 million to assist the Red Cross, funneled through the administration. Hoover was denied a role, which he resented but expected. The Master of Emergencies attempted to create a private relief organization to aid the democracies occupied by German and Russian soldiers but made little headway. He had hoped to distribute food to the German-occupied civilian populations of Poland, Norway, and the Netherlands through an organization modeled on the CRB. Hoover asked the governments-in-exile of the occupied nations to furnish the funds and encountered a solid wall of resistance from the British, especially from Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who believed such assistance would undermine the effectiveness of the British blockade. It was Germany’s responsibility to feed these peoples, Churchill argued, and he had no intention of relieving them of that responsibility.22
In December 1939 Time speculated that the 1940 potential GOP presidential candidates were watching Hoover. He was the missing link, the enigma of the campaign. Time estimated that the Californian would control two hundred of the one thousand delegates on the opening ballot. He remained the most convincing critic of the New Deal’s domestic and foreign policies. Yet, Time added, “the star performer was poison at the box office.”23 The magazine explained that most Republicans, even the party professionals, considered Hoover the ablest man in the party, yet preferred another candidate, and the polls bore out that conclusion. Throughout 1939 and into the fall of 1940 the ex-president was ranked high in ability but remained the first choice as a candidate for very few of his fellow Republicans.24 The GOP wallowed in the position of a disgruntled, habitually losing baseball team that kept its star player on the bench. They would let him pinch-hit for other players occasionally, yet never promote him to the starting lineup. The reason: he had once struck out.
The 1940 nominating campaign and subsequent election occurred during the midst of a nationwide debate over foreign policy, though Hoover strove to point out the structural weaknesses of the New Deal, the dangers of collectivism, and Roosevelt’s greed for personal power. In his Lincoln Day speech in New York the former president reprimanded the New Deal for producing the greatest divisions in the fabric of the nation since Lincoln’s time. The rivalry between Hoover and Landon continued. Landon felt certain that Hoover coveted the nomination or wanted to name the standard-bearer. Both men strove to mend fences with Thomas E. Dewey of New York, a rising star in the party. The Hoovers were spending more time in New York, which provided opportunities for socializing with the Deweys.25
Hoover made his final attempt for the GOP presidential nomination in 1940. As he had in his past campaigns, he adopted a covert strategy that was overly passive, hoping for a coup at the convention, in which he would galvanize the delegates with a stirring speech that would have them stampeding to his banner. Hoover’s approach was ineffectual and lacked vitality. Though he remained the most experienced and most respected individual in his party, and retained a core of loyal supporters, rank-and-file Republicans questioned his electability. In retrospect, the other GOP candidates nominated did not fare well either, and the humiliation of the Depression was not attached to Hoover alone—he was merely its most visible symbol. It was attached to the entire Republican Party, which faced an entrenched Democratic machine that mowed down the opposition by exchanging jobs for votes, serving spiced invective, and promoting a suave, politically adroit though economically illiterate leader.
Hoover desperately wanted the nomination, and he believed Roosevelt might be vulnerable, due to the third-term issue, the economic recession of 1937–38, the aborted Court-packing plan,
and the fact that the nation remained mired knee-deep in the muck of the Depression. Therefore, the 1940 Republican nomination would be a greater prize than the 1936 selection. However, competition for the nomination was fervent and many Republicans remained doubtful that the warmed-over candidate slaughtered in 1932 could prevail. The field became more crowded when Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio declared his candidacy in August 1939. Next to himself, Taft was Hoover’s first choice, but he would not abandon his own ambitions to support Taft prior to the convention. Taft put out feelers to Hoover about nudging California’s uncommitted delegation toward him, but the ex-president balked. As the convention approached and Hoover realized it would be his last chance to escape the purgatory of political rejection, he shed some of his inhibitions in campaigning. Though no glad-hander, he showed a glimmer of humor and an appealing human side. People saw a Hoover they could like as well as respect.26
Hoover’s campaign for the 1940 nomination was temporarily deflected by his involvement in war relief. He seemed more energized to undertake relief activities than to cultivate delegates, organize, raise funds, or deliver political speeches. Hoover became lackadaisical about the nomination and conceded that he had become a long shot. During the critical month of January 1940 he made few decisions, delivered no speeches, and seemed to have lost interest in the campaign, completely preoccupied with relief for Finland. Attention in political circles focused on other candidates.27
Moreover, Hoover’s friends warned him against taking undue risks. They advised that by announcing as a candidate early and openly, the ex-president might relinquish his credibility as a trustworthy critic of the New Deal, making his comments appear self-serving. Hoover reconsidered. Publicly, he remained available, but he backed away from plans to shift his campaign into high gear. Subtly, he was better organized at the grassroots level than in 1936. He had established a core of supporters in the Western states constituting a potentially substantial bloc of Hoover-leaning delegates. Yet it was a disadvantage, especially in raising money, to remain reticent while other candidates focused single-mindedly on the nomination. Further, he realistically recognized Roosevelt’s continued popularity. People felt comfortable with him in the White House as threats loomed from abroad. Roosevelt, for his part, was running as a peace candidate. As the campaign progressed, foreign policy overshadowed domestic policy. Yet if there were risks in declaring his candidacy openly, there were even greater risks in waging a second stealth campaign, which had not worked in 1936. With the stakes higher in 1940, rival candidates had the opportunity to gather momentum and galvanize support. Hoover backed off. His earlier tendency to mingle and cultivate delegates, to seek the nomination more openly, had been but a dalliance. The spark of ambition did not ignite. He realized he was a long shot to win either the nomination or the election. Sadly, he also realized this would be his last chance. Hoover’s head told him the quest was unlikely, and his heart was not entirely in it either. The ex-president still had many admirers, and he was self-taught at campaigning and raising money. Without the war there would have been no third term, and probably no desire for one on the part of the president or the population. Further, Hoover had learned by trial and error, and while he wanted to win, he at least wanted to influence the outcome. Beyond the election, he wanted to influence the principles on which the campaign was fought and won. This was a more modest, more realistic goal. Hoover took the obligations of the loyal opposition seriously.
Hoover’s bid for the nomination in 1936 had not included any grassroots organizational work, but in 1939 he created groups called the Republican Circles to build a base for his nomination in the Western states. Each adherent to the circles was a Hoover partisan. By late March of 1940 Hoover wrote his friend Arch Shaw that he had just completed a round of meetings with groups in the circles, one meeting per night. However, by this time, U.S. Senator Robert A. Taft, son of former president William Howard Taft of Ohio, had declared his candidacy. Now Hoover was not alone on the Republican right. He wanted to move the GOP back to core center-right principles and cease flirting with the New Deal. Although Hoover worried that Dewey might threaten his own aspirations, he also feared Landon lurking on the left. The old wounds in the party remained raw. It would be imprudent to squander this golden GOP opportunity to return to power and move the party’s center of gravity to center-right at a time when the incumbent had been weakened. Moreover, Roosevelt sent mixed messages prior to the convention, and there was the possibility that FDR might retire. Hoover continued to monitor the spread of his Republican Circles as they expanded into Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and California. With his Western base secure, Hoover would command a strong position at the convention.28
Hoover had superior experience to any other pretender for the throne, yet his credentials were marred by his thrashing in 1932. In an aggressive speech to the delegates on June 25, 1940, the ex-president disparaged FDR as a power-craving autocrat who was leading America toward collectivism at home and into a preventable war abroad. He warned that FDR had exaggerated the danger from Germany in order to prolong his own tenure in the White House. Hoover’s hope to sway the delegates to his standard was frustrated by a faulty microphone, probably tampered with by foes, that left his voice virtually inaudible. Instead, the delegates turned to an unlikely, inexperienced ex-Democrat, Wendell Willkie, who lacked Hoover’s assets but also lacked his liabilities.29
Roosevelt’s strategy in his third campaign followed the script of his first two. He largely ignored Willkie and again pulverized Hoover, hitting below the belt if necessary. Perhaps the worst aspect of the Democratic campaign was not its defamation of Hoover in a personal sense but its irrelevancy to the situation at hand. Poised on the brink of war, with unemployment still at high levels, Democratic orators carped about conditions back on March 4, 1933. The first volley was fired at the Democratic convention and the subsequent attacks never ceased. Keynote speaker Alben Barkley fired both barrels at Hoover: “We inherited chaos eight years ago,” he maintained. “We inherited a lack of confidence. . . . The Americans had been led to the brink of precipice by the fallacies of a smug and blind regime.”30
Hoover wanted to make a difference in the 1940 campaign. Willkie was weak among the conservative base, which the ex-president believed he could help energize. Yet Willkie was cautious and indecisive, and his entourage was riddled with dissent. Some of his advisers considered the ex-president a pariah who would be a liability to the campaign. Yet other Republicans would be critical if the ex-president were not invited to participate. Landon tried to tiptoe around the subject. Hoover had considered Landon’s campaign disorganized, yet Landon had seemed like Solomon compared to Willkie. Further, Hoover feared that the nominee, to an even greater extent than Landon, did not offer voters a clear alternative to the New Deal. He found him personally likable, charming, even effusive, with undeniable magnetism, but it seemed no one was in control. For all his charm, Willkie was simply not a strong leader. Hoover feared he would be pulverized at the polls.31
Charles Halleck, who had placed Willkie’s name in nomination at Philadelphia, arranged a meeting between the two men on August 12, hoping to cobble together a tacit alliance or at least dissipate the arctic atmosphere that prevailed. The meeting went poorly. Willkie invited Elliott Roosevelt, the president’s son, to pose for photos with him in Hoover’s presence. Willkie vaguely promised that Hoover would make several major talks—only two or three, the ex-president learned. On the other hand, Hoover found the businessman’s personal charm refreshing, but he confided to a friend that the campaign was in disarray. He offered some organizational ideas, none of which was accepted. The former president’s speeches were not delivered until late October, after most minds were decided. At Columbus, Ohio, Hoover attacked the third term and FDR’s overreach for power. His speech was punctuated by humor, and Hoover’s journalist friend Mark Sullivan commented that it was “an unanticipated and highly agreeable experience to hear an audien
ce laugh at practically every second or third sentence of a speech by Herbert Hoover.”32 Several days later, a second speech, at Lincoln, Nebraska, was also well received. The energized campaigner focused his firepower on FDR’s foreign policies, accusing the president of dangerous dabbling and lack of competence in dealing with global matters. At Salt Lake City on November 1, Hoover wrapped up his campaign, returning to domestic policies and the theme of usurpation of power. Roosevelt punched back, again ignoring Landon. “Back in 1932,” he bristled, “these leaders were willing to let workers starve if they could not get a job. Back in 1932, they were not willing to guarantee collective bargaining.” Then, in the cruelest cut, “Back in 1932, they met the demands of unemployed veterans with troops and tanks.”33
In late 1940 Hoover wrote Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes in an effort to encourage him to resign his office a few weeks before the election and campaign for Willkie, urging voters to repudiate FDR. Hughes felt this was unprecedented and would be neither prudent nor effective. When Hughes received Hoover’s letter he responded that he had already been approached by Willkie himself and had declined. If nothing were done, Hoover’s letter stated, Willkie was certain to lose. In retrospect, Hoover regretted sending the letter because he decided Willkie was intellectually a lightweight, little improvement on Roosevelt.34
Dismayed by Willkie’s nomination, Hoover nonetheless had campaigned for him. He pilloried the incumbent for surreptitiously leading the nation into war while pretending to be a peace lover. Some of Roosevelt’s purported peace measures were in fact war measures, he believed. On both domestic and international issues, the president reeked of intellectual dishonesty, the former president told friends. Roosevelt’s shattering of the third-term precedent and thunderous victory drained Hoover. Yet he remained resolute. He continued relief efforts and rested his case before the bar of history.35