Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover was the President of the United States when the Great Depression began. He is described as the first modern President because of his revolutionary approach to selling himself as a candidate using “the techniques of modern publication relations on a massive scale.” Today, Hoover is routinely mentioned among the three or four Chief Executives on any list of the worst Presidents of all time.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Commonly referred to as FDR, he succeeded Hoover as President in 1933 and remained in the office for the extent of the Great Depression. FDR’s approach to ending the Depression was the implementation of a series of government programs called the New Deal, but despite these efforts the general consensus is that the Great Depression finally came to an end only due to America’s entry into World War II following the attacks on Pearl Harbor.
Francis Townsend
Townsend was by trade a doctor, but became an essential figure during the Great Depression as a result of an old pension strategy that came to be known as the “Townsend Plan.” Beneficiaries over 60 would receive $200 a month from the government provided they met three requirements: they were retired, not habitual criminal and—most importantly—had to spend the money they received within a month. This last requirement was the key to stimulating the economy. Townsend’s plan was eventually fine-tuned into what became the Social Security system.
Upton Sinclair
Sinclair was a muckraking journalist and author of the groundbreaking novel The Jungle. He was also a member of the Socialist Party until being drafted by the Democrats into an unsuccessful bid for governor; an election in which Sinclair’s opponents conducted what the author refers to as the most distorted and lie-based campaign in American history until 1972. Notably, the author also identifies Sinclair as the man whose ideas were “the closest political approximation to the dominant values of Depression America.”
Raymond Moley
Moley may be the single most important figure in the book who remains essentially unknown to the vast majority of Americans. Moley was part of a “brain trust” which was behind the election of FDR and the development of the economic foundation for addressing the lingering Depression. He also wrote much of Roosevelt’s first inaugural address and even often claimed credit for coming up with the name “New Deal.” However, Moley would eventually be troubled by the President “turning to the left” in 1935 and by the time FDR died while still office had become one of his biggest critics. He would eventually become a registered Republican, write a conservative column for Newsweek and—in a testament to just how great the divide actually grew between Moley and FDR—receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Roosevelt’s ideological opposite, Richard Nixon.
