AHC: Hoover wins '32

Have Roosevelt die before the convention, and either Al Smith wins the nomination again, or John Nance Garner does, or the Democrats settle for some other week candidate.
 
Herbert Hoover refuses to sign the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, keeping the Great Depression from "becoming" the Great Depression. We instead end up with a major recession, with unemployment around maybe at most 12%. That's still a lot, and it will be rather difficult for Hoover to win reelection, but he has a far better chance under those circumstances.

Also it might help for FDR to lose his 1928 bid for Governor of New York (which he almost did).

If, of course, you mean with a POD post-1931, then I've got nothing.
 
Herbert Hoover refuses to sign the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, keeping the Great Depression from "becoming" the Great Depression. We instead end up with a major recession, with unemployment around maybe at most 12%. That's still a lot, and it will be rather difficult for Hoover to win reelection, but he has a far better chance under those circumstances.

Also it might help for FDR to lose his 1928 bid for Governor of New York (which he almost did).

If, of course, you mean with a POD post-1931, then I've got nothing.

I think you need both of those.
 
I think you need both of those.

Alright, so assuming that is the case...............

Franklin Roosevelt I'll have elected in 1930; it makes sense with a 1928 defeat and the follow-on Depression, but it also keeps him from being a viable Presidential candidate, as he would have at best been Governor of New York for a year and a half. His energy would be behind Al Smith's Presidential Bid.

So we have a battle between Al Smith and a number of other candidates, the prominent one for the sake of this discussion being Senator Cordell Hull. Smith certainly has a lot of support, but will that translate into support of 67% of the delegations present? No. Smith is a Catholic, Smith lost to Hoover in a landslide, and the delegates know this. However, those delegates that will support Smith are just as dedicated to him, and aren't about to back off for anyone. And so we reach an impasse.

Following a number of inconclusive ballots, with Smith having attained close to five hundred votes but still far from nearly seven hundred he requires, some talk is made in smoke-filled rooms regarding a possible compromise candidate. By the 9th ballot, a host of candidates withdraw their names in favor of Newton Baker, who would narrowly manage to clinch the nomination on the 11th ballot following some additional defections from the Smith camp. Cordell Hull is named his running mate.

From there, due to the damage from the Democratic Convention, Hoover might have a chance of winning. Admitedly Smith would be a better candidate for this, but I simply don't see the convention nominating him under the 2/3rds rule they had in place.
 
Herbert Hoover refuses to sign the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, keeping the Great Depression from "becoming" the Great Depression. We instead end up with a major recession, with unemployment around maybe at most 12%. That's still a lot, and it will be rather difficult for Hoover to win reelection, but he has a far better chance under those circumstances.

Also it might help for FDR to lose his 1928 bid for Governor of New York (which he almost did).

If, of course, you mean with a POD post-1931, then I've got nothing.
Even without Smoot-Hawley, the Great Depression will still be the Great Depression. The tarriff war it inspired was just sauce for the goose.
 
Even without Smoot-Hawley, the Great Depression will still be the Great Depression. The tarriff war it inspired was just sauce for the goose.

I'm of the opposite school on this. Certainly things could have gotten worse, but I believe the Depression as we know it was primarily driven by the Tariff.
 

I'm of the opposite school on this. Certainly things could have gotten worse, but I believe the Depression as we know it was primarily driven by the Tariff.
The statistics don't bear that out. Exports accounted for 5.0% of the US GDP in 1930, and by 1933, they had only fallen by 61% in absolute terms, whereas GDP had fallen by half. It most certainly exacerbated the crash, but it is not sufficient to account for the loss of half of US economic activity in three years time.

The other crucial factors: deflationary fiscal policy, deflationary monetary policy, overinvestment/overproduction caused by a non-optimal distribution of wealth, etc., clearly outweigh tariff wars in explaining the Great Depression. And arguably, the deflationary monetary policy accounted for as much of a loss in foreign trade as the tariffs did.
 
The statistics don't bear that out. Exports accounted for 5.0% of the US GDP in 1930, and by 1933, they had only fallen by 61% in absolute terms, whereas GDP had fallen by half. It most certainly exacerbated the crash, but it is not sufficient to account for the loss of half of US economic activity in three years time.

The other crucial factors: deflationary fiscal policy, deflationary monetary policy, overinvestment/overproduction caused by a non-optimal distribution of wealth, etc., clearly outweigh tariff wars in explaining the Great Depression. And arguably, the deflationary monetary policy accounted for as much of a loss in foreign trade as the tariffs did.
And the Tariff didn't effect the banks? Its effects were not restricted merely to international trade; it managed to hit everything that was loosely connected to it. If banks start losing massive investments that are based on trade, they may close, and then you have the ripple effect from then on.
 
Have hoover veto the Smoot-Hawly act, and somehow convince him to do more to intervene in the Economy. Otherwise you could have the US go to war with Japan in 1931 over China.
 
I give up. There are few absolutely certain electoral defeats in 20th century American history greater than that of Herbert Hoover in 1932. Except for Alf Landon four years later.
 
There are a few things which could help Hoover, though I basically agree with whoever said that a Dem winning in 1928 would be the best way to get Hoover into office in 1932 (and assuming the depression still happens, Hoover would be all but assured of the presidency in those circumstances).

Alternatively you could have Coolidge run and win in 1928 (or Frank Loden)-the point is, Hoover isn’t in office and is free to distance himself from the republican administration. Hoover runs as a republican and not being the unpopular incumbent, manages to win the nomination and beats… someone other than FDR in a close race.

If you want Hoover to be president from 1929-1937 then you might need a combination of a shallower depression, no FDR and an assassination attempt of some sort (perhaps it seriously injures Hoover but doesn’t kill him, though recovery takes a while)-he therefore has plausible deniability re why he didn’t "do anything" (at least in some people's minds) to combat the depression.

With a post 1931 Pod it’s probably not happening under any circumstances though.
 
Even without Smoot-Hawley, the Great Depression will still be the Great Depression. The tarriff war it inspired was just sauce for the goose.

Current research indicates that the tariff was contractionary in more ways than simply trade demand itself--It had the effect of constricting credit, and significantly magnified other issues.

But the trade wars were still only part of the story. The incredible and utterly counterproductive imposition of global monetary contraction by the US and French banking authorities strangled the life out of the economy without regard to the broader impacts or the deflationary effects they were exporting through the gold standard system.

Sadly, it's not a simple fix, because the problems in the world's financial system were deeply rooted, and there were political considerations. France for example wanted to accumulate gold reserves in order to defend the value of the franc regardless of the 'rules' of the gold standard, or its effects abroad, and was politically bound by the absolute refusal to tolerate any price inflation or devaluation out of misguided fear for another hyperinflation.

In the US, the Federal Reserve was seized by the notion that the late '20s economy was in a bubble--despite the existence of contractions in some sectors, and the lack of price inflation. They believed they could and should try to pop the bubble by constricting credit, which they did very successfully even as the economy stopped growing. Gold was flowing into the US at the time, which should have been a monetary stimulus to expansion--but the Federal Reserve sterilized that inflow, even while the economy and financial markets were in free-fall.

Trying to pop a bubble with monetary policy is like trying to lance a boil with a mace in the best of times, but the notion that there even was a bubble in the broader economy isn't actually supported by the data. The real economy was experiencing genuine growth in the 1920s, with widespread innovation and diffusion of new products and associated demand for fixed investment joined with growth in productivity. The fundamentals simply don't justify the degree, duration, and overall severity of the contraction until you consider the confluence of horrible policy moves on a global level. "A" recession was inevitable at some point, but the Great Depression was not foreordained from on-high, or written in the stars.
 
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