“Well, Felix, now I’m chosen.”
The speaker was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who, along with his friend and advisor Felix Frankfurter, was at his home in Albany monitoring Herbert Hoover’s radio coverage of the unfolding political disaster in Washington.
That was in 1932. Hoover sent the military to break up a camp of World War I veterans who had gathered to demand immediate payment of bonuses they had been promised for their service. News of cavalry gassings and tramplings of civilians (deaths including infants born during the so-called Bonus Army’s national marches) dominated front pages and tarnished Hoover’s public image throughout the presidential campaign. .
It dates back more than 92 years to Donald Trump’s Sunday rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden. The rally was a sombre and macabre festival of racist hatred and profane slurs so vile that even Republicans who had turned a blind eye to Trump’s character for years distanced themselves. ourselves from the event.
Their fear may be that this highly publicized event will instill a fundamental distaste for President Trump’s political persona and behavior among undecided voters needed for re-election.
This incident (perhaps falsely) reminds me of Mark Twain’s quote, “History doesn’t always repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” This is because the attack on the Bonus Army and the Madison Square Garden rally share characteristics that may link them as turning points in the campaigns.
As Twain might have acknowledged, this comparison is not perfect. Notably, the Bonus Army attack occurred on July 28, 1932, at the height of the presidential campaign, whereas the Trump rally occurred just 10 days before and early on Election Day. Mail-in and in-person voting has already begun in many states. President Trump has threatened to use the military to quell the protests. Hoover actually did that.
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But there is a rhyme to the events. Let’s take a look.
Let’s start with the main character. Hoover and Trump became president after winning their first campaigns, and both entered the White House as wealthy men. However, the similarities end there.
Hoover made a name for himself in public service. During World War I, he served as chairman of the Belgian Relief Committee, which transported food to German-occupied Belgium, and later served as chairman of the U.S. Food Administration, which sought to stabilize food prices during the United States’ participation in the war. served as chief. After the war ended, he became chairman of the American Relief Committee, which provided food relief to war-torn countries in Europe.
Hoover served as Secretary of Commerce under Warren Harding and his successor Calvin Coolidge, and in that role oversaw the interstate negotiations that paved the way for the construction of the massive dam that bore Hoover’s name. Trump had no official duties before being elected president.
Well, Felix, that’s it for me.
— Franklin Roosevelt to Felix Frankfurter after hearing Hoover’s attack on the Bonus Army
The two acquired wealth through different paths. Hoover was an early riser who earned an engineering degree as a first-year student at Stanford University and made his fortune as a mining engineer. Trump inherited wealth from his father, who was a real estate developer.
Mr. Hoover, like Mr. Trump, saw himself as the nation’s savior. Secretary of State Henry Stimson wrote in his diary, “He has fallen into the belief that the state of this country really depends on his re-election.” Trump often claims he is the only person who can save America from war and economic depression. Obviously, neither of them saw themselves clearly.
On the Democratic side, Roosevelt and Kamala Harris were despised by critics as intellectual detractors despite having successful careers in government—Roosevelt was a New York senator, Woodrow Harris As Assistant Secretary of the Navy under Wilson and then Governor of New York. Harris served as district attorney of San Francisco, attorney general of California, U.S. senator, and vice president.
Nevertheless, FDR was despised by former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. as having a “second-class intellect but first-rate temperament.” His contemporary, intellectual Walter Lippmann, accused FDR of being “a very impressionable man, without a firm grasp of public affairs.” … He doesn’t have any significant qualifications for public office, but he’s a fun guy who wants to be president. ”
Trump and his allies constantly disparage Harris as a “former California prosecutor with a low IQ,” in the words of Tucker Carlson, who continues to languish at a Trump rally on Sunday.
The Republican Party in 1932 and 2024 was a fractured organization when it nominated its presidential candidates.
During his term, Hoover proved to be a technocrat with no political skill. Republican rebels (led by Harold Ickes, who later served FDR as Secretary of the Interior) staged a “Dump Hoover” campaign at their national convention. It collapsed because there was no candidate to take over the colors.
Trump won the 2024 Republican convention, but not without challenges from candidates concerned about his lack of appeal outside of his core right-wing base. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who received as high as 40% of the vote in a series of primaries, did not. That’s enough to make her a candidate for the nomination.
This poses a potential turning point in the races for both Republicans.
For Hoover, it was his response to the Bonus Army. This was a nationwide movement calling for early payment of benefits that Congress had voted to cost veterans up to $4 billion, but whose reimbursement was not scheduled until 1945. Veterans can borrow money from the government for bonus certifications, but only if the interest rate is high.
In 1931, as the Great Depression tightened its grip on the United States, unemployment skyrocketed, and slums of dispossessed Americans known as “Hoovervilles” spread, veterans began flocking to Washington, leading to the civil war. anxiety has been resolved.
Among their targets was Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, who was adamantly opposed to early redemptions. (Mr. Mellon’s grandchildren include Timothy Mellon, the largest individual donor to the Trump campaign and other Republicans this election cycle.)
The Bonus Expeditionary Force, as the Bonus marchers called themselves, was formed in Portland, Oregon, and was led by an unemployed retired sergeant named Walter W. Waters. As Paul Dixon and Thomas B. Allen reported in their 2004 book about the Bonus Army, they began to move east — “hundreds of thousands of men, women, children, A baby…walking, hitchhiking, hopping cargo.”
Most of the marchers scattered along the way, but by the end of June, Hoover had housed as many as 15,000 limp men and their families in Washington’s desolate and muddy Anacostia Flats neighborhood. A camp resembling a building appeared. They were fed with donated food, treated at an on-site clinic, and marched to Parliament House, where a bill to bring forward bonus payments is being debated. (It was passed by the House of Representatives but rejected by the Senate.)
Hoover and his aides became increasingly anxious about the settlement at Anacostia Flats, especially when its organizers began talking about making it permanent. There were talks of communist infiltration and rumors of planned violence. President Hoover decided in early July to evict the marchers, passing responsibility on to the Army Chief of Staff, General Douglas MacArthur.
MacArthur called the camp’s residents “rebels” and took on the task of enthusiastically unleashing tanks, bayonets, and tear gas on his compatriots. This prospect appalled MacArthur’s aide, Maj. Dwight D. Eisenhower, 28, but he later claimed that he tried to convince his superior that the job compromised his dignity. . MacArthur rejected him.
On July 28, an attack was launched that included cavalry under the command of Major George S. Patton. Two veterans were killed and 55 wounded in the operation. A 12-week-old infant died after being exposed to tear gas. The Anacostia tent camp was completely destroyed.
The next day, Mr. Hoover issued a statement explaining that the government had acted to prevent “mob-rule coercion.” He continued to patiently defend his actions until his death. In his memoir, he implied that “I killed veterans on the streets of Washington,” and accused Democrats of distorting the events. He charged that the Bonus March was primarily “organized and promoted by communists and included large numbers of thugs and ex-convicts.”
Coincidentally, as president, Roosevelt was less enthusiastic about paying out bonuses early than Hoover and Mellon. In 1936, Congress overwhelmingly passed a bill that made the bonuses payable immediately, overriding FDR’s veto.
The effects of the Bonus Army attack continue to be felt. This began with the enactment of the GI Bill, which paid for tuition, textbooks, and supplies (and a $50 monthly living allowance) to provide scholarships to returning veterans, creating a vast aid administrative infrastructure for service members and veterans. It was to prepare for. University education transformed American society into a meritocracy.
The bill was signed by Franklin Roosevelt in June 1944, a few weeks after Allied forces crossed the English Channel on D-Day.
It was also a warning to President Trump that taking military action against civilians would cause a massive public backlash, in which case it would be the case just over three months later that Franklin Roosevelt It contributed – no one can say by how much – to the president’s landslide defeat against Hoover. Through the New Deal, Roosevelt’s presidency established a new principle in American politics: the government exists to help all citizens, not just the wealthy.
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