America's economy languished in the depths of a monumental meltdown.

Outgoing President Herbert Hoover, the Great Engineer of so-called New Era know-how, had tried in vain to rally his fellow citizens from what eventually proved to be the deepest and most devastating economic depression in U.S. history.

Buoyed by a flood of letters declaring him another Moses, a modern Joshua, and begging him to assume near dictatorial powers, Franklin Delano Roosevelt rode into the White House that late winter of 1933 as a savior sent by God. Roosevelt's mission: to rescue the nation from what he liked to call Wall Street's “unscrupulous money-changers.”

The contrast between the new president and his predecessor could not have been greater. Hoover, generally remembered as an intensely private man small of stature and self-righteously thin skinned, continued to insist despite all evidence to the contrary that recovery lay just around the corner. Roosevelt, jauntily affable and open in his frequent public appearances, a New York patrician who smoked cigarettes through a silver holder, offered an upbeat message of hope, confidence and a renewed sense of optimism to a country still reeling nearly four years after the stock market's devastating crash.

Hoover, the Republican technocrat, at first relied on a traditional Christian and civic faith to vanquish the nation's financial woes. Roosevelt—the Democrat “chameleon on scotch plaid,” as his presidential opponent labeled him for his ever-shifting political platform-eventually settled on a massive dose of federal intervention. But were their evolving blueprints for recovery really all that different? Or was it more in the way the electorate perceived them?

Davis W. Houck, assistant professor of communication, thinks the answer lies in the concept of public confidence. In Rhetoric As Currency : Hoover, Roosevelt, and the Great Depression, (Texas A&M University Press, 2001) Houck finds more similarities than differences in the two bitter antagonists' views on how to win the economic war. But while legislative initiatives came to play a significant role in both their game plans, he says, collective belief in who could pull it off proved even more crucial.

When the time arrived to elect a new president, an overwhelming majority of voters had come to the conclusion that Roosevelt could solve their problems while Hoover didn't have a clue. In Houck's opinion, why they came to that belief had less to do with facts and more with political rhetoric. Which is just another way of saying that words do matter, and the strategic choice of words matters fundamentally.

“The key term to understanding Roosevelt's success is confidence,” Houck said in a recent conversation. “There was a crisis of confidence in the nation, a crisis of belief. And while Roosevelt was able to convince people by his words and example of the value of optimism, Hoover became almost a caricature of the do-nothing, laissez faire pessimist. Which he was not. But that's what people thought.”

A self-described rhetorician-traditionally involved in the study of speech texts but particularly since the 1960s expanded to include such unlikely symbols of communication as protest songs and marches, draft-card burnings and even body language-Houck originally set out to write a factual account of Roosevelt's first 100 days in office. It was a watershed in American politics, during which the initial wave of FDR's New Deal policies made Big Government a key player in matters that previously had been considered outside the bounds of Washington's jurisdiction. Houck's intent was to chronicle the changing rhetorical style and terminology that Roosevelt employed to sway an often-reluctant, sometimes openly antagonistic Congress.

“But I'm kind of a context nut, so I had to do some background work on Hoover, too,” Houck said. “My understanding was that Hoover was the arch-villain whom FDR swept off the stage. Actually, it wasn't that way at all.”

In many ways, Houck said, Roosevelt's New Deal simply borrowed Hoover's evolving series of government programs aimed at pumping life back into an almost moribund economy. Even Roosevelt's justly famed first inaugural address-in which he urged his fellow Americans to realize “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”-was little more than a takeoff on Hoover's oft-repeated cry that a stiff dose of confidence would do wonders toward healing the nation's woes.

Both men, Houck found, accepted the theory of economist John Maynard Keynes that public confidence was vital to economic recovery. As such, they recognized the pump-priming role of large-scale government spending financed by private dollars. At the same time, there was the equally important “immaterial” solution: belief or confidence fostered by presidential rhetoric.

In Keynes' view, people had to believe in their president's vision for it to work. Because the economy itself is such an intangible and unpredictable concept (“Any model of its behavior is about as accurate as a weather forecast,” Houck said), they had to have confidence in his vigor and what Keynes called his “animal spirits.” On that score, Roosevelt came out a clear winner.

“Hoover was a brilliant manager, a perfect example of the emerging technocrat genius,” Houck said. “But he was also incredibly stubborn and disdainful of the White House press corps. Until he became president, he had never been elected to public office and never had to learn the art of compromise.”

FDR, on the other hand, was both an artful and adroit juggler of political ideology. His constantly reshuffled legislative agenda seemed to promise something for everyone in the polyglot Roosevelt army. Through an exceptional ability to manipulate both verbal and visual symbols, he comes down to us as the smiling, to-the-crowd-waving, utterly confident and fearless leader who soothed our cares and calmed our jangled nerves.

Behind the façade, Houck said, lurked what he called “the philanderer and aloof father, the untrusting friend, the back-biting assistant secretary of the navy, the failed vice-presidential candidate, the flip-flopping presidential candidate, the manipulative administrator, or the egocentric fourth-term president.”

“A sly chameleon,” as one historian put it, Roosevelt remained through four terms in the White House a master of what Houck called “oral rhetoric.” Propped up by heavy, cumbersome metal leg braces and leaning on his son's arms or those of a loyal aide, he not only looked physically fit but also managed to turn the crippling effects of his 1921 bout with polio from an almost certainly fatal political liability into a brilliant symbol of his ability to overcome adversity. In his new book, FDR's Body Politics (Texas A&M University Press, 2003), Houck describes the almost obsessive lengths that Roosevelt went to hide his disability from the world while turning his apparent mastery of it into a political asset.

“To become president,” Houck said, “FDR knew that in public he had to appear to be healthy-someone who could appear to walk, who looked healthy, and who interacted with others.”

Even the president's speech writers played a role in keeping up the deception, Houck said, emphasizing in their drafts FDR's physical well-being while downplaying his opponents in words that underscored their alleged physical shortcomings. “Roosevelt would re-figure his opponents' bodies (Hoover and other Republicans) as diseased, crippled, and sedentary bodies incapable of feeling,” Houck wrote. “In so doing, he would also re-figure his own polio-ravaged body as the healthy and robust body most suitable for dealing with the nation's depressed and prostrate state.”

It was a strange game, perhaps. Some might argue not even necessary. But apparently Roosevelt was convinced that his political future depended on hiding the devastating symbol of a crippled body from public view. The deception was so pervasive that as late as its 1997 dedication, the Washington memorial to Roosevelt did not include the wheelchair he so heavily relied on behind the scenes.

“Never should we lose sight of the fact that FDR's mission was singular: to become president,” Houck said. “And he knew that crippled bodies were not 'fit' for that job.”

On the modern stage, Houck draws parallels to Roosevelt's rhetorical tactics in a study of any of George W. Bush's speeches as they are crafted by his writers. Carefully chosen mantras such as “axis of evil,” “weapons of mass destruction,” and “terrorist regime” suggest images far more fearful than a less colorful description might convey. Themes revolving around fear and uncertainty (global terrorism for Bush, economic disaster for Roosevelt) join the two in a word game that is hardly unique to either. Bush's jet-fighter landing on an aircraft carrier returning from duty in Iraq differed little from President Clinton schmoozing with the troops in Bosnia, but the macho image will surely resonate with second-term voters still wary of his spotty military service during the Vietnam era.

“There are several ways he could have been put out there, but this way played huge in the heartland,” Houck said of the short flight out to the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln. “As an example of the influence of modern rhetoric, it was brilliant.”

Although the thrust of Houck's work so far has been economic rhetoric, his future projects head in very different directions. One study will trace media reporting of golfing sensation Tiger Woods and his own family's careful packaging of Woods from an emphasis on his Asian-black heritage to one that has become racially neuter. Another will delve into the writings of Malcolm X, particularly through such primary sources as a recently uncovered cache of the fiery activist's speeches.

“So much of our culture is now either visually based or protest based,” Houck said. “And so many different people have designs on us. Advertisers, television folks, a boy or girl friend, our next-door neighbor. How they go about trying to influence us is what rhetoric is all about.”