Us Presidents 30-42 Essay, Research Paper
30. President – Calvin Coolidge
Term – August 3, 1923 to March 3, 1929
Coolidge set out to establish a working relationship with the leading members of the Harding administration, and he drew on many people for advice and help. The scandals of Harding’s presidency, particularly the Teapot Dome oil affair, were coming to light, and Coolidge spent much of his time defending his party. His relations with Congress were unhappy, but he coped with scandal by prosecuting offenders, and, thanks to that, his integrity, and his self-possession, he retrieved public confidence in the White House.
He gained enough control over the Republican Party to be nominated for president in June 1924. Coolidge also gained enough of the people’s confidence to be easily elected over his major opposition, John W. Davis (Democrat) and Robert M. La Follette (Progressive). When Coolidge entered the campaign with a series of “nonpolitical” statements late that summer, it was as the apostle of prosperity, economy, and respectability. His opponents exhausted themselves with charges about the government’s deficiencies, while the President received credit for his equanimity and the economic upturn. But 1924 was a sad year for Coolidge, for in July his younger son, Calvin, Jr., died of blood poisoning.
Coolidge was fairly successful in getting what he wanted during his full term as president. Heading the list were paring the national debt and reducing income taxes, so that there would be more money for consumer spending. Other measures included orderly growth of civil and military aviation, expansion of the services of the departments of Agriculture and Commerce, regulation of radio broadcasting, development of waterways, flood control, and encouragement of cooperative solutions to farm problems. Twice, he blocked enactment of the McNary-Haugen bill, which proposed to dump farm surpluses abroad in the hope of raising domestic market prices, because he objected to its price-fixing features and its cost.
31. President – Herbert Clark Hoover
Term – March 4, 1929 to March 3, 1933
With the nation unprecedentedly prosperous and with large Republican majorities in Congress, Hoover began his administration under auspicious circumstances. In his campaign he had promised to call Congress into special session to consider farm relief and limited changes in the tariff. He called Congress into special session on April 15, 1929, and on June 15 it passed the Agricultural Marketing Act, designed to help farmers suffering from low incomes in an era of prosperity.
Hoover’s recommendation for tariff revision, an increase in agricultural duties also designed to help the farmer, became the Hawley-Smoot Tariff, the highest peacetime tariff in the nation’s history. Although the bill was not what he wanted, Hoover signed it on June 17, 1930, justifying his act on the ground that the flexible provision, permitting him to change rates within a compass of 50% on the advice of the tariff commission, would enable him to remedy injustices in the law.
Early in his administration Hoover attacked the problem of enforcing prohibition. On May 28, 1929, he announced that he had appointed the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement, with George W. Wickersham as chairman, to investigate the problem. The commission made its report nearly two years later. The report was self-contradictory, and nothing came of it.
Hoover’s administration, like that of Martin Van Buren almost a century earlier, was dominated by one development–an economic depression. The disastrous slump that began when the stock market crashed on Oct. 29, 1929, left from 12 to 14 million Americans unemployed before the end of Hoover’s term. In the 1930 congressional elections the weak Democratic minority in the House of Representatives became a majority, and the Republican majority in the senate dwindled to a plurality of one.
Hoover believed that aid to the hungry and the deserving unemployed should come from local governments in the states and counties, not from the federal government. Yet he recommended and Congress appropriated funds for huge public works. On Hoover’s recommendation, Congress established the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, approved Jan. 22, 1932, with an initial working capital of $500 million. It tried to provide indirect relief to the unemployed by lending insurance companies, banks, farm organizations, railroads, and state, county, and city governments money to stimulate economic activity and employment. His opponents criticized him for this “trickle down” theory, based on the idea that if the government aided big business at the top of the nation’s financial structure, business would then create more jobs and relieve unemployment at the bottom. Yet, he inaugurated a new policy of government assistance to those in need in time of economic crisis, though not directly to the masses of unemployed.
32. President – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Term – March 4, 1933 to April 12, 1945
While Roosevelt was governor of New York, the Great Depression tightened its grip on the country. Roosevelt, seeking new ideas, enlisted a “brains trust” of Columbia University professors to help him devise programs against hard times. These professors included Rexford Tugwell, Raymond Moley, and Adolf Berle, Jr. All became leading figures in the national administration in 1933. Acting on their suggestions, Roosevelt stressed the need to assist the “forgotten man.” He added “the country demands bold, persistent experimentation.” Meanwhile, Farley and other supporters were lining up delegates for Roosevelt throughout the country. By the time the Democratic national convention opened in Chicago in June 1932, Roosevelt stood out as the most dynamic and imaginative contender for the presidential nomination.
Despite these assets, FDR faced formidable opposition at the convention, from House Speaker John Nance Garner of Texas; former Secretary of War Newton D. Baker of Ohio, a potential compromise choice; and former Governor Smith, who still cherished ambitions of his own. For three ballots Roosevelt held a large lead, but lacked the two-thirds margin necessary for victory. Farley then promised Garner the vice-presidential nomination. The move succeeded. Garner reluctantly accepted the vice presidency, and FDR took the presidential nomination on the fourth ballot.
Most party leaders applauded the Roosevelt-Garner ticket, which closed the heretofore-fatal gulf between the urban-Eastern and rural-Southern-Western wings of the party. They responded especially to Roosevelt, who broke with precedent to fly to the convention and to tell the delegates, “I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people.”
33. President – Harry S. Truman
Term – April 12, 1945 to January 20, 1953
The Truman Doctrine, which granted aid to Greece and Turkey and promised assistance to other nations threatened “by armed minorities or by outside pressure”; the Marshall Plan, which used American economic resources to stimulate the recovery of European economies outside the Soviet sphere; the Berlin airlift, designed to maintain the Western presence in that city, which was surrounded by the Russian-occupied zone of Germany; and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the nation’s first peacetime military alliance. Truman’s Point Four program helped new nations develop economically.
These steps, which added up to a policy of “containment” of communism, constituted unprecedented U.S. involvement in Europe during peacetime. Truman not only made the decisions but also used all his power to get the policies accepted. His success also owed much to a bipartisan group in which a Republican, Sen. Arthur H. Vandenberg (Mich.), played a key role.
Truman accomplished less in domestic affairs, in part because he was so busy with international concerns. Beginning in September 1945, he fought to continue and expand the New Deal, soon labeling his program the Fair Deal. He encountered the same coalition of conservative Republicans and Southern Democrats that had frustrated Roosevelt frequently after 1936. This coalition effectively opposed Truman when the Democrats dominated congress (1945-1946 and 1949-1956) as well as when the Republicans were in control (1947-1948). One of his few domestic victories was the passage of the Housing Act of 1949, which included a provision for public housing.
In another area in which Truman made important contributions–civil rights–he had to rely chiefly on executive action, publicizing the question and desegregating the armed forces. But he failed to obtain passage of law assuring equal job opportunities for blacks and ending poll taxes, lynching, and discrimination on public transportation. His personal concern about the problems of black Americans, as well as his quest for the black vote, and his worry about the damage that American racial practices did to the nation’s image in the world moved him to act. Nearly all Southerners opposed him, however, and Southern senators filibustered effectively against his legislative proposals.
In 1947, Congress overrode Truman’s veto of the Taft-Hartley Act, which Truman said unfairly weakened the bargaining power of unions. Truman’s frequent interventions in labor-management disputes were significant, because they expanded the role of the president in this area. The railroad and coal industries provided major occasions for action in 1946. Steel did in 1952. But the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the argument that the president has inherent powers to seize firms in emergencies. Faced with a steel strike during the Korean War, Truman had seized steel mills to keep them operating.
34. President – Dwight David Eisenhower
Term – January 20, 1953 to January 20, 1961
The initial domestic objectives of the new administration were to balance the budget, reduce the agricultural surplus by lowering price supports for farm products, and institute a loyalty program that would discourage the investigations of Senator McCarthy. Apart from Eisenhower’s inexperience, other obstacles impeded his efforts. Groups accustomed to receiving financial aid from the federal government opposed the reduction of government expenditures, and Congress was reluctant to offend them. Farmers wanted to grow as much as they pleased while retaining high price supports. Worse still, factional differences paralyzed the small Republican majorities in both Houses of Congress. Control rested with the Taft faction. Taft had tried to cooperate with Eisenhower, but he soon died. Thereafter, congressional leadership was more obstructive.
As a result, it took Eisenhower three years to balance the budget, and his victory was illusory because mounting expenditures for foreign aid and defense soon produced a new deficit. He also secured a token cut in support prices for agriculture. At first his cautious efforts to outflank McCarthy were fruitless, but McCarthy overreached he in 1954, was censured by the Senate, and lost his influence. Meanwhile, a mild economic recession had begun, and many people blamed the monetary policies of George M. Humphrey, the conservative secretary of the treasury.
The Supreme Court confronted Eisenhower with another problem in May 1954 by declaring segregation in public schools unconstitutional. It set no time schedule for compliance. Most Northern African Americans customarily voted Democratic, and Eisenhower might have converted some by pressing energetically for implementation of the court order. But he temporized, partly because he was fearful of arresting the movement of Southern Democrats into the Republican Party.
Presidents seldom look, as good in their second term as in their first, and Eisenhower was no exception to the rule. During his second term, Eisenhower also faced increasing repercussions from the 1954 school desegregation decision of the Supreme Court. Inclined to take the legally defensible but morally dubious position of acquiescing in delaying tactics, Eisenhower was obliged to act when a Southern mob obstructed token integration of a high school in Little Rock, Ark., in 1957. His initial efforts to get state authorities to enforce a federal court order were fruitless. So he dispatched military units to Little Rock and secured compliance with bayonets. The sullen attitude of local whites discouraged Eisenhower from further efforts at integration either by coercion or any other method. The adverse effect of his indecisiveness on African Americans was compounded by the tactics of Republican senators, many of who voted with Southern Democrats to retain the rules permitting filibusters against civil rights legislation. Civil rights acts passed in 1957 and 1960 dealt rather ineffectively with voting rights.
Neither African Americans nor any other discontented group were inclined to support the Republicans when Eisenhower’s magical name did not head the ticket. The GOP, also handicapped by a recession, suffered a disastrous defeat in the 1958 congressional elections as the Democrats sharply increased majorities in both the Senate and the House.
35. President – John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Term – January 20, 1961 to November 22, 1963
Prior to the election, Kennedy had planned to present to Congress a sweeping legislative program similar to that of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first “100 days.” The closeness of the election caused him to proceed more cautiously, but in his first months in office he sent CONGRESS a record number of messages proposing broad programs to promote more rapid economic growth, rehabilitate depressed areas, improve urban housing and development, reform tax legislation, revise the farm program, conserve and develop natural resources, aid education, and provide better medical care for the aged. In effect, he was establishing his long-range goals. At the time he obtained little more from Congress than relatively short-range legislation to help pull the nation out of a mild recession in 1961.
Kennedy’s domestic program remained largely in the planning stage throughout his administration. Congress did not heed his urging for programs of tax reform and aid to education, and it killed his proposals for a department of urban affairs and for medical aid for the aged. In January 1963 he proposed a reduction in income taxes as a means of stimulating economic growth. Congress, however, delayed passage of the tax cut until February 1964, three months after his death.
Kennedy’s action on a proposed steel price increase in 1962 resulted in one of the most controversial domestic issues of his administration. In March of that year he persuaded the united steelworkers to accept a contract he hailed as “noninflationary.” A few days later, the United States Steel Corporation announced an increase of 3.5% in its prices, and most other steel companies did likewise. In the three days that followed, Kennedy brought such intense pressure to bear that the companies rescinded the increases. But in the aftermath, businessmen widely criticized the president as being hostile to them.
Civil Rights was the most difficult national problem to face President Kennedy. Throughout his political career he had taken a moderate stand on civil rights, although his administration gave strong legal support to the foes of segregation. In June 1963, as pressure for racial equality mounted, the president addressed the nation, declaring that the United States faced a “moral crisis” as a result of discontent among blacks. Later that month he sent a special message to Congress, calling for extensive civil rights legislation. As with the tax cut, Congress delayed action and did not pass a comprehensive civil rights bill until the summer of 1964, after the president’s death.
36. President – Lyndon Baines Johnson
Term – November 22, 1963 to January 20, 1969
At the top of the new president’s agenda was enactment of Kennedy’s proposals on civil rights and taxes. The proposals had been made earlier in the year, but Congress had failed to take final action on them. Now, however, Congress acted. With Johnson in the White House, Congress behaved in domestic affairs, as it had not done since Franklin Roosevelt’s first term. In 1964 it passed the Tax Reduction Act, which reflected the economic theory that at times the federal government must spend more than it takes in order to stimulate economic growth. Congress also passed a very broad civil rights law that attacked segregation, banned discrimination in public accommodations, and eliminated restrictions in job opportunities. And these new laws were only Johnson’s largest victories.
The situation in the country, as well as Johnson’s talents, contributed to these accomplishments in 1964. Kennedy had done much of the preparatory work, and his assassination had generated a national mood that tended to remove opposition to his proposals. The militant civil rights movement exerted pressure, and scholars and publicists alerted the public to the existence of major problems in American society, poverty above all. But Johnson’s leadership was an important factor. From the first he employed all of his tested techniques for dealing with Congress, and he supplemented these with frequent speeches that, in effect, appealed over the heads of the congressmen to the people themselves.
Since the spring of 1964, Johnson had talked of building a “Great Society,” and he had organized a series of “task forces” to help give concrete meaning to this concept. With their help, by January 1965, he was armed with a series of messages and drafts of bills.