National Affairs: Hoover Halfway

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with the help of the blundering Work, the undercover Mann, the flaming Willebrandt, the thundering Borah, the uprighteous Hughes. With upturned eyes he ignored the tempestuous issue of Religion breaking at his feet. On Prohibition he said nothing. He preached a gospel of "American individualism," promised a "job for every man," grew rhapsodic over "the home," vowed that only his election could perpetuate Republican prosperity. One might have thought he was running against thin air for all the notice he took of the energetic, loud-speaking, issue-raising, far-traveling Brown Derby. His cautious, banal campaign was unsatisfying to those citizens who prefer a direct discussion of immediate issues to a lofty dissertation on the abstractions of American idealism.

The Hoover canvass closed with a triumphal trip across the continent to vote at his Palo Alto home—a formality new to the Republican candidate. There he received the returns which, by the greatest electoral college majority in U. S. history, transformed Nominee Hoover into President-elect Hoover. Tears of joy and gladness coursed down his plump cheeks under the California stars. Next came the South American goodwill trip, a prelude of grandeur during which Mr. Hoover tasted the sweets of sovereignty. Back in the U. S. he busied himself with Cabinet carpentry in Florida, fidgeted impatiently. And then that cold, rainy March 4, 1929, on the front steps of the Capitol—

Rarely if ever had a President taken the oath of office with public expectation of great achievements whipped to a higher pitch. President Hoover had been extolled as the Superman whose engineering genius would reform and elevate the Art of Government. Advertised for Washington was a New Era. With the Press trumpeting welcomes and high hope, with a Cabinet substantial though not exceptional, President Hoover took his new job with a rush of enthusiasm. He stifled a Mexican revolution with an arms embargo. He moved to conserve oil on the public domain. He banished the hypocritical "Official Spokesman" from the White House. He summoned a special session of Congress to deal with farm relief and tariff revision. He exhorted the People to war against Crime. He began to appoint expert commissions to solve tough old problems. Everybody was heartily with him, as they are with most Presidents, during this "honeymoon" period of his Administration.

But an alert, active President cannot long avoid trouble. President Hoover's first came within two months of his inauguration. As part of Farm Relief, the Senate wanted an export debenture. Bold and self-confident, President Hoover scotched this subsidy plan, won much public applause. He, said his friends, would show the Senate who was master. Nevertheless, that first victory cost President Hoover the friendship and support of Senator Borah and the Insurgents. A breach in the G. O. P. was then opened that gapes wider than ever today.

Political ineptitude in Herbert Hoover was one thing the country had been loudly warned about—but in the summer of Prosperity neither leaders nor masses gave a fig for statecraft. The tariff fight first made this deficiency glaringly plain. The President had called for "limited revision" but had miscalculated the greedy demands upon his own party from industrialists for top-notch rates. Their pressure soon put Congress clean out