Herbert C. Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt were contemporaries and
             outstanding Americans of the first half of the 20th century who both rose
             to the highest political office of their country. They are, however,
             remembered in history for widely contrasting reasons. While Hoover was a
             one-term President who presided over the most serious economic crisis in
             the country's historyâ€"the Great Depressionâ€"Roosevelt is the only US
             President to have been elected 4 times and is gratefully remembered for
             having pulled his country out of the Depression. Some people believe that
             Hoover was unfairly held responsible for the Great Depression and they may
             well be right but there is no escaping the fact that some of his policies
             worsened the economic crisis and it was left to the outstanding leadership
             of FDR and his New Deal policies that lifted the spirits of a dejected
             nation and reversed the downward spiral of a seemingly endless recession.
             When the US stock market crashed[1] in October 1929 taking the wind
             out of the US economy, Herbert Hoover had been in office for less than a
             year; hence his Presidency cannot be held solely responsible for the
             downturn. Hoover, nonetheless, was unable to gauge the seriousness of the
             situation, believing that the problem was a temporary "business cycle" that
             would correct itself. Due to his shy personality, he could not impress the
             public with the need for calm or reverse the rising "tide of fear" about
             the future of the economy. (Leibovich 107). Hoover's policies did not help
             either as he stubbornly stuck to a policy of "balanced budgets" and
             proceeded to increase taxes and cut back governmental spending at a time
             when exactly the opposite monetary policy was required. Hoover's famous
             "rugged individualism" and his almost dogmatic belief in "mutual self-help
             and voluntary giving" prevented him from the need of the ho...