Winter War: Hoover, Roosevelt, And The First Clash Over The New Deal, Rauchway - B

                                         This book is about the four months between FDR's election and inauguration. Hoover believed the country had made a huge mistake and continued his campaign against Roosevelt's new ideas. "In their different ways, during the Depression winter that followed the 1932 election, both Roosevelt and Hoover thought the American experiment now faced its greatest threat since the secession winter that followed the 1860 election. The conflict between them, and the traditions of liberalism and conservatism they established, remain central to US politics today. The election did not decide the outcome of this contest, but only began it."  Late on election night, Nov. 8th, Hoover conceded the election, but neither he nor his aides were willing to stop trying to make their case.  He invited Roosevelt for a conference at the White House, hoping to entrap FDR into supporting Hoover's intent to extend the debt moratorium for the Europeans. The wily Roosevelt could not and would not be pinned down, although the President thought FDR had agreed with his proposal.  Hoover later told his aides, "I'm going to lay off for six or eight months and then I'm going to start raising hell." They clashed during the lame duck session of Congress when Hoover proposed a balanced budget and a regressive sales tax. The progressives in Congress, encouraged by FDR, rejected the proposals. Roosevelt asked for a briefing on international affairs from outgoing Secretary of State Henry Stimson and Hoover refused. Stimson and others in the State Dept. insisted and the president eventually allowed it, but only if FDR asked first. After a January meeting at the White House, Hoover said, "I never will be photographed with him. I have too much respect for myself." As banks began to fail in the new year, Hoover stuck to the Republican theory of letting weak banks fail and FDR encouraged intervention to save the system. "The difference between them, forged in this crisis, would define their political descendants' attitudes toward banking and monetary policy for decades to come."  As his term wound down, the president hoped that the bank crashes would come after he was out out of office.  In February, Hoover withdrew his own personal money from banks and told FDR that the bank runs were his fault because people didn't believe in the New Deal and that he should renounce it. On the actual day of FDR's inauguration, Congress unanimously approved all cabinet appointments and Benjamin Cardozo swore them all in at the White House later in the day. The 100 Days followed and thus began the longest, and one of the most successful, presidencies in American history. Hoover spent the next thirty years talking down the New Deal and paving the way for the rightward tilt of the GOP.                                                                                                                                           This is a far from great book. Over a third of it is spent on various domestic topics where the two men clearly disagreed, but the author does not point to any particular dispute during the four months in question. It does however take Hoover to task for his hate-mongering, further relegating him to the dustbin of history.