The Presidency of Alfred E. Smith

[Wolfpaw]

I've always been of the opinion that, had the Democrats won in 1928, when the Depression set in, we would see Hoover the Humanitarian becoming the Republicans' great hope to solve the crisis.

People forget that a lot of HH's pre-presidential rep was built on disaster relief.

 

[Turquoise Blue]

I've always been of the opinion that, had the Democrats won in 1928, when the Depression set in, we would see Hoover the Humanitarian becoming the Republicans' great hope to solve the crisis.

People forget that a lot of HH's pre-presidential rep was built on disaster relief.

Indeed. A FDR-style landslide for Hoover in 1932 is very likely, if Smith wins. Honestly, 1928 was a poisoned chalice, honestly.

 

[Emperor Norton I]

*Snip*

Firstly, no. Hoover did start to put things in place, but only after foot dragging, by which time it was too late. The Depression was not a cake walk that everyone else in the world got out of in a few years (thanks to noninterventionism in the economy in your thinking, I assume) except for the US under its interventionist Liberals, and FDR did not prolong the Depression (there was marked recovery throughout the New Deal, which only stopped during the '37 recession, which came about when FDR tried a conservative effort to cut back on stimulus and balance the budget). But secondly, and most importantly, why have you invited 6 billion screaming board liberals to storm the thread?

 

[Rich Rostrom]

I was researching and found that Smith did indeed carry the South OTL, which was quite surprising, as the South still doesn't seem to look at Catholic candidates the same way. It's even more shocking with the influence of the KKK back then.

Smith did very poorly in the South compared to any other Democratic candidate of the period before 1948. One can't really say he "carried" it.

It would be more accurate to say that Smith only split the South. Hoover carried Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia - five of the 11 "Confederate" states, with 64 electoral votes. Smith carried Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina, with only 63 EV.

Compare 1928 with 1920, when Harding won an even bigger national landslide than Hoover (60.3% to 58.2%). In most southern states, Hoover outpolled Harding by a huge margin:

Change in Rep % of Pres vote, 1920-1928

+16.6% in Alabama
+26.3% in Florida
+14.7% in Georgia
+11.7% in North Carolina
+28.2% in Texas
+16.0% in Virginia

Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennessee did not change much, for various reasons.

The reason for the huge swing was Smith's Catholicism.

 

[SlideAway]

One possibility: FDR is defeated by Albert Ottinger in the 1928 New York governor's race. (It was very tight in real life.)

In 1930, Al Smith stages a comeback, defeating Ottinger to retake the NY governorship. He is renominated by the Democrats in 1932 and is elected by a substantial margin (albeit by less than FDR did OTL.)

 

[phx1138]

people worried a subway tunnel was a Catholic plot to connect NYC with the Vatican

You've just proven the stupidity of the American voting public has no upper limit.

You're also right, Smith opposed Prohibition.

I'm going to stop there. Hoover wasn't responsible for it. Coolidge was.

Hoover was largely responsible for the crash of 29 which started the Depression

I suggest you're both wrong.

FDR made it the Great Depression in the USA while most other countries got out quickly.

This is, apparently, a fairly common view. It holds FDR didn't let prices & wages "find their natural level". IDK enough economics to say, but seeing he attempted to keep wages high, there is support for it. That high wages subsidizes buying power, & so consumption (which could absorb insanely high production, which was being done on the prima facie lunatic theory "production creates demand", which was in place before the Crash), IMO it was a good thing. Others clearly disagree.

He immediately began overregulation policies which directly led to the collapse of the stock market.

Nonsense. The market crashed when the Fed raised the rediscount rate, which was absurdly low until then. It effectively smacked the speculators with a dose of reality, which it should have done in, oh, 1926. (Seriously, when shares in companies you never heard of are trading at 400, & the P/E ratios are above 30, the market has gone nuts.)

It's kinda like Barack Obama claiming everything is George Bush's fault despite that when Obama was a Senator who voted for the spending, debt and war funding.

Preposterous. What else was in the bills Obama voted for? Which party enacted the policies deregulating the banks & eliminating enforcement of the regulations? It wasn't Democrats.

the Roaring Twenties was one ginormous bubble.

Exactly. What caused the Crash was the Federal Reserve making money so cheap it made more sense to put it in the market than loan it. It was the Fed not raising rates well before September 1928, as it became clear speculation was going to crazy lengths. It was not the direct product of policy or action by any President, nor by what any President did not do.

 

[d32123]

Preposterous. What else was in the bills Obama voted for? Which party enacted the policies deregulating the banks & eliminating enforcement of the regulations? It wasn't Democrats.

Actually, it was. Guess which President repealed Glass-Steagal?

 

[JRScott]

Preposterous. What else was in the bills Obama voted for? Which party enacted the policies deregulating the banks & eliminating enforcement of the regulations? It wasn't Democrats.

In 1999 and 2000 Barack H. Obama missed 1/3rd of all Senate votes, just like his primary opponent John S. McCain did. In votes that they cast there were only two votes where they voted differently.

He voted and rubberstamped everything he later claimed to be against, and he then continued the same programs he railed against, its all clear in the record if anyone is willing to read it, sadly many of his followers are blind to the man's many failings.

The fault is that most Americans have never examined his voting record, and the Media sure weren't interested in doing due diligence on him giving him a pass when they shouldn't have.

 

[phx1138]

He voted and rubberstamped everything he later claimed to be against

I'm not going to defend his voting record. He also said the war in Iraq was the product of an intelligence failure, which is the same lie Bush told.

What you're conveniently ignoring is, it was a Republican policy, orchestrated by a Republican Congress & a Republican President, that led directly, incontrovertibly, to the bank crash. Let's cut the bullshit, shall we?

The "less regulation" effort was a concerted effort. And you still hear it: the answer to bank crash & people having their houses stolen out from under them by unregulated mortgage brokers is less regulation.

the Media sure weren't interested in doing due diligence on him giving him a pass when they shouldn't have.

And I suppose McCain's connection to the S&L thieves is a fabrication of the "liberal elite"? I suppose Romney's endorsement of public health care in his home state, but not for anyone else, is a conspiracy? I suppose Ryan's willingness to accept platinum-plated, government-run, taxpayer-funded, single-payer heath care as a Congressman, but to deny it to everybody else, isn't hypocritical?

Y'know, it's strange Republicans won't endorse single-payer care. It would reduce costs of business fairly substantially. Fully a third of the health care budget in the U.S. is going into paperwork, for all the insurance company forms. The outcomes of for-profit care are also poorer than not-for-profit...which should be pretty easy to undestand: costs have to be cut somewhere...