Herbert Hoover: Annual Message to Congress

Herbert Hoover was an honest public servant who entered politics reluctantly. He lacked the personal ambition of many of his contemporaries and truly believed his role in government was to serve the American people. Nonetheless, history initially unfairly portrayed the president as cold and uncaring, and Hoover became forever identified with the misery and suffering of the Great Depression. Hoover was not a dynamic speaker. His public addresses tend to contain a high degree of technical and policy information, but they lack dynamism. Hoover believed that the public could be swayed through logic and detail, and he looked down on other politicians who adopted a populist tone or who appealed to emotion in their messages. Consequently, many of his speeches and messages were intended to persuade people through the recitation of facts and figures, not necessarily to inspire. His 1931 Annual Message to Congress provides an overview of Hoover’s efforts to deal with the Great Depression, proposing a broad agenda that foreshadowed the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt.