Conventional wisdom holds that the Great Depression sank Herbert Hoover’s presidency. After all, how could it not have? When American voters went to the polls in November 1932, the unemployment rate exceeded 25% and the global economy languished amid the most severe downturn in modern history.
In light of the Great Depression, it seems obvious that when voters elected Franklin Roosevelt—a charismatic candidate who had promised a “New Deal” for the American people—they must have done so for economic reasons. Indeed, a central political tenet (then and now) is that voters always vote their pocketbooks. As the Democratic strategist James Carville famously put it in 1992, “it’s the economy, stupid.”
Surely the same was true in 1932?
The historical record, however, tells a different story. FDR’s New Deal policies played a much smaller role in the election outcome than is commonly understood. So what did motivate voters in 1932? To a remarkable extent, the answer is Prohibition, the nationwide ban on alcohol.
The latest evidence of Prohibition’s critical role in the election comes from a new article in the January 2019 issue of PS: Political Science. In The American Voter in 1932: Evidence from a Confidential Survey, Helmut Norpoth analyzes the results of a confidential election poll commissioned by the Hoover campaign. Using sophisticated polling techniques, the 1932 survey revealed that opposition to Hoover’s Prohibition policies—rather than frustration with the administration’s economic policies—persuaded a critical mass of voters to abandon the Republicans and support Roosevelt and the Democrats.
Here is the abstract from Norpoth’s fascinating article:
“In 1932, the American electorate was surveyed in a poll that has languished in the archives. The survey was conducted by Houser Associates, a pioneer in market research. It interviewed face-to-face a representative cross section about voter choices and issue attitudes. Although conducted on behalf of the Hoover campaign, the poll was not biased in his favor. The most striking revelation is that the electoral sway of the Depression was quite limited. The government was not seen by most voters as the major culprit or as having been ineffective in alleviating it. Even many FDR voters agreed. Moreover, there was no widespread ‘doom and gloom’ about the future. What loomed larger in 1932 was the issue of Prohibition. The American people overwhelmingly favored repeal. The Democratic stand on it—that is, outright repeal—was a sure electoral winner, given Hoover’s staunch defense of Prohibition.”
The Green New Deal
The story of the Houser poll underscores a point too often lost in popular memory: the 1932 election did not represent a referendum on Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal policies.
That fact may come as a surprise to many of FDR’s admirers. For example, in February, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and other progressive Democrats called for a Green New Deal, a 10-year plan to “achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions” while providing a guaranteed “family-sustaining wage” for all Americans, replacing air travel with high speed rail, installing “charging stations [for electric cars] everywhere,” and establishing universal “high-quality healthcare.” Expressly invoking the spirit of FDR, supporters of the Green New Deal have suggested it serve as the centerpiece of the Democratic presidential campaign in 2020.
But the assumption that Franklin Roosevelt ran on a bold progressive platform in 1932 is simply not correct. If anything, FDR ran to Hoover’s right in 1932, which should give at least a little pause to progressive Democrats who invoke Roosevelt as a political model. He was a far more cautious, centrist-oriented politician than many progressives may realize.
FDR’s 1932 Balanced Budget Platform
One of the reasons why FDR could run to the right on economic issues in 1932 was the fact that President Hoover was a much moderate conservative than his historical caricature would suggest. Although Hoover hoped the economy would right itself after the 1929 stock market crash, he eventually took strong action to battle the Depression. In particular, he signed into law the Emergency Relief and Construction Act as well as the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, both of which later became foundations of FDR’s New Deal programs.
But Hoover’s relief policies led to unprecedented peacetime deficits, which gave Roosevelt an opportunity to outflank Hoover from the right. In the process, FDR used small government rhetoric that would scandalize progressive Democrats today. For example, in a September 1932 speech in Sioux City, Iowa, FDR declared:
One month later he went even further, announcing in a Pittsburgh speech: “I regard reduction in Federal spending as one of the most important issues of this campaign. In my opinion, it is the most direct and effective contribution that Government can make to business.” Roosevelt insisted that he would only adopt programs that did not “cost the Government any money.”
None of FDR’s economic promises bore the slightest resemblance to reality. As the historian William Leuchtenburg explained in his classic book Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal: 1932-1940, the Roosevelt Administration pursued domestic policies that dramatically expanded the size and power of the federal government. The great irony of the 1932 campaign, therefore, was the fact that President Roosevelt would engage in deficit spending on vastly greater scale than President Hoover.
Amid a collapsing economy, Roosevelt had no choice but to engage in deficit spending. The crisis demanded unprecedented levels of government intervention to pull the economy away from the abyss. But the economic imperatives of the Depression made Roosevelt’s budget-balancing campaign rhetoric especially shameless and opportunistic. Years after the 1932 election, Marriner Eccles—who served as a top economic adviser to FDR as well as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board—conceded that in light of “later developments, the [1932] campaign speeches often read like a giant misprint, in which Roosevelt and Hoover speak each other’s lines.”
A National Referendum on Prohibition
But Roosevelt practiced what he preached when it came to his support for repeal of Prohibition.
The nationwide experiment with alcohol prohibition began in January 1919 when three-quarters of the states ratified the 18th Amendment, which banned the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors.” Nine months later Congress enacted (over Woodrow Wilson’s veto) the Volstead Act to enforce Prohibition.
From start to finish, the federal government’s war on alcohol bombed on a spectacular scale. The Volstead Act not only failed to end alcohol consumption but also inadvertently created nationwide organized crime syndicates. Prohibition also drained millions of dollars from government coffers as a result of lost tax revenues from alcohol sales and skyrocketing enforcement costs.
Early in the campaign it became clear to Roosevelt that opposition to Prohibition could help him win the White House. In the spring of 1932 Literary Digest published a poll that revealed that 73% of voters supported repeal of the 18th Amendment. Sensing the change in public opinion, Roosevelt jumped on the repeal bandwagon. In August 1932 he gave a New Jersey speech in which he called Prohibition a “stupendous blunder.” Interestingly, he also condemned Prohibition on federalism grounds:
“We have depended too largely upon the power of [federal] government action. . . . The experience of nearly one hundred and fifty years under the Constitution has shown us that the proper means of regulation is through the States, with control by the Federal Government limited to that which is necessary to protect the States in the exercise of their legitimate powers.”
His line of attack worked phenomenally well. Voters cut Hoover slack when it came to fighting the Depression, but they were out of patience when it came to the war on alcohol. In November 1932 Roosevelt won a crushing victory, carrying 42 of 48 states and 57% of the popular vote. Democratic congressional candidates also embraced the repeal platform, which propelled them to huge majorities in the House and Senate.
Accordingly, as David Kyvig pointed out in his book, Repealing National Prohibition, both parties saw the 1932 election results as a national referendum on Prohibition:
“[P]oliticians and other contemporary observers gave it major credit for the outcome. They thought the prohibition issue had determined many votes. This belief proved crucial to the process of abolishing the Eighteenth Amendment. The election of 1932 was widely interpreted as a voter directive for repeal.”
Congress got the message. In February 1933 the House and Senate overwhelmingly approved sending the proposed 21st Amendment—which would repeal the 18th—to the states for ratification. The states acted with extraordinary speed. In December 1933 the proposed amendment achieved the required three-fourths approval when Utah became the 36th state (of 48) to approve the 21st Amendment.
Lessons for Green New Dealers
Once in office, of course, FDR greatly expanded federal power in a whole host of areas. His presidency gave rise to the Social Security Administration, the National Recovery Administration, the Public Works Administration, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Works Progress Administration, and many other new agencies (“bureau upon bureau” as FDR had disparagingly put it on the campaign trail). The New Deal agencies and programs represented an unprecedented level of federal intervention in the national economy. Roosevelt’s interventionist policies thus make it entirely logical for Green New Dealers to look to him for inspiration.
But the story of the 1932 election should also serve as a warning sign for Green New Dealers. When it came to the economy, FDR campaigned on a platform quite different from how he governed. Roosevelt may have governed from the left, but he campaigned from the right. To a striking degree, therefore, the New Deal represented a historical accident, rather than a set of policies consciously embraced by the electorate.
While this is a fascinating history based on a very interesting unearthed historical record, I am skeptical about the relevance to today's politics. Not only is the electorate very different today rather than in 1932 (demographically and economically in almost every way), the fact that we have a completely different administrative state ushered in by the old New Deal makes the idea of a "Green New Deal" understandable and even logical in the eyes of the electorate. I do wonder what the "Prohibition" analogy might be in today's election as well. Perhaps the Russia investigation or other corruption in government?
Posted by: Not sure | March 07, 2019 at 05:35 PM
What utter nonsense. Somebody who's writing a book about Prohibition is incentivized to make his subject a central issue in American history. There are no shortage of books whose title is "How (fill in the blank) changed America." Can you reference a single general history regarding the onset of the Depression and the election of 1932 that argues that Prohibition played a significant effect upon the outcome?
You are correct, though, when you point out that FDR's election platform was dramatically different than how he governed. It's forgotten (or never learned) by most that the Democrats who took control of Congress following the 1930 election were led by men far more conservative than Hoover and who believed that the solution to the declining economy was to cut spending and raise taxes. People voted for FDR and Democrats for Congress in 1932 not because they analyzed the party platform and decided that was the best answer to the country's problems, but because they were desperate and wanted the incumbent leadership out.
David Kennedy's Freedom From Fear (part of the Oxford History of the United States series) gives an excellent sense of how the American economy was falling apart with no apparent end in sight during 1930-32
Posted by: PaulB | March 07, 2019 at 08:43 PM
Not sure,
Rest assured, I am not making any predictions about 2020. I have no clue what will happen next year (after all, I predicted that Hillary Clinton would win in 2016!). But I do think it's helpful to examine the historical context in which FDR operated, particularly now that the New Deal's legacy is a subject of renewed public interest. In any case, thanks for your comment!
Posted by: Anthony Gaughan | March 07, 2019 at 08:45 PM
PaulB,
I absolutely agree with you about David Kennedy's book, and I also agree that common sense would indicate that the Depression must have played a big role in the 1932 election.
But don't you find it interesting that the politicians of the time interpreted the 1932 election as a referendum on Prohibition?
Moreover, it's interesting that Prof. Kennedy himself notes that Prohibition played a surprisingly large role in the early Depression-era elections. On p. 60, writing of the 1930 midterm elections (which occurred one year after the stock market crash), he observes that "[r]eflecting the still imperfect national focus on the severity of the economic crisis, many races turned more on the issue of Prohibition than on the depression . . . ."
At a minimum, I think this is a subject worthy of more scholarly scrutiny.
Thanks for your comment!
Posted by: Anthony Gaughan | March 07, 2019 at 09:14 PM
There are a variety of reasons an individual may want to drink alcohol (some apparently availing), and the Great Depression no doubt provided both the masses and elites with one such rather ample reason. In a society economically, socially, and culturally conditioned by capitalism there is a tendency to assume, perhaps subconsciously, or at least without full awareness (owing, say, to self-deception, denial or wishful thinking) that, in the words of Jon Elster, “the best life for the individual is one of consumption, understood in a broad sense that includes aesthetic pleasures and entertainment as well as consumption of goods in the ordinary sense.”* While a would-be Liberal democratic capitalist society advocates and is said to realize freedom (which it upholds as a paramount if not absolute value), often in terms of an ill-defined or constricted conception of “free choice,” endogenous preference formation is ubiquitous if only because that putative freedom of choice (of life-style, etc.) is “to a large extent preempted by the social [in this case, capitalist conditioned] social environment in which people grow up and live” [and opportunities for conspicuous consumption entrench the belief that one is enjoying the full benefits of ‘freedom’]. The conception of the good life, therefore—and unsurprisingly—is often framed in terms of an updated version of “bread and circuses” (this need not be imposed from above, as we’re perfectly capable of forging the chains that bind us).
Consumption of alcohol would undoubtedly serve to temporarily alleviate (i.e., provide an escape from) the widespread material and psychological conditions of insecurity, anxiety and fear brought about by the dreadful socio-economic conditions of the Great Depression. And I suspect a tendency towards instant gratification in conjunction with an understandable desire for some respite from suffering in such times of widespread misery could well motivate an electoral focus on the repeal of Prohibition. Alas, however, just like the pleasures of consumption generally, the pleasures associated with alcohol consumption are subject to the law of diminishing utility, indeed, in this case they often “become jaded overt time, while the withdrawal symptoms become increasingly more severe. The consumption activity remains attractive not because it provides pleasure (or masks one’s suffering), but because it offers release from withdrawal symptoms[!].” To better appreciate this, consider, conversely, “the attractions of self-realization [which] increase over time, as the start-up costs diminish and the gratification from achievement becomes more profound [there are ‘economies of scale in self-realization,’ unlike consumption.]”
It would seem uncontroversial that FDR’s appeal was soon enhanced with the development of New Deal programs, the effects of which, unintentionally in most cases, provided increased opportunities not only for tangible diminution in material and psychological suffering (put differently, a minimal level of social welfare and well-being) but even opportunities for the intersubjective experience and joint benefits of self-realization.
* More abstractly perhaps, and viewed from the perspective of production and production relations, this same society created a market in labor power that, historically speaking (and alongside other conditions and effects of capitalism), served to distort, corrode, or destroy the communities, traditions, and reference groups that were the sources of conceptions of the “Good life” (or better, the life of the Good), and thus the principal repository of moral values and principles. As Michael Luntley wrote some years ago, “[f]or capitalism to flourish, moral agency must be replaced by economic agency and therefore it is no good trying to put a ‘human’ face upon capitalism.” These facts are further entrenched by related processes of belief formation under capitalism (well understood by Marx and clearly explained by Elster) which is conducive to cognitively-based ideological illusions, like the belief that many workers remain in the working class (rather than becoming capitalists) out of choice, rather than necessity.
Posted by: Patrick S. O'Donnell | March 08, 2019 at 09:30 AM
Thank you for your comment, Patrick.
Prohibition did work in one respect: it decreased per capita alcohol consumption, even in the years after repeal of the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act. For example, David Kyvig notes in his book that per capita alcohol consumption in 1941 was only 60% of what it had been 30 years before (as measured by federal liquor tax payments).
At the same rate, however, adoption of the 21st Amendment repealing Prohibition had a remarkably strong impact on the economy. As Prof. Kyvig points out in his book, by 1940 alcohol production and sales created over 1.2 million jobs and generated one billion in wages and another one billion in tax revenues.
Of course, those figures do not include the lost work hours and the social costs associated with alcoholism. But there is no doubt that in the 1930s a critical mass of Americans believed that Prohibition undermined the economy by driving down tax revenues and increasing law enforcement expenditures.
Thanks again!
Posted by: Anthony Gaughan | March 08, 2019 at 10:33 AM
I am not sure about the New Deal (and am no expert on it all) but am pretty thoroughly convinced that Prohibition gave us modern criminal procedure.
https://www.vanderbilt.edu/university-press/book/9780826521880
Posted by: Wes Oliver | March 10, 2019 at 03:43 PM
Your book looks great, Wes! It's on my list of books to read.
Posted by: Anthony Gaughan | March 10, 2019 at 07:42 PM