Hoover Damned

Recently, a lot of liberal bloggers and pundits have been reviewing lists composed by various historians and "experts" of the best and worst presidents in United States history. They are all truly nonsense. Some will try and add an air of scholarship to it by measuring something nonpartisan like "leadership" or "effectiveness in implementing their agenda." But that's just a smoke screen. The score is what matters and every measure is of something that is completely subjective to the writer. You might find one you like, but if you dig, you'll likely just find that it was composed by someone with whom you happen to agree politically.

But there are some constants even between lists made on the right and the left. One is that Richard Nixon will rank near the bottom and another is that FDR and Ronald Reagan will rank near the top. But the guy who always gets the short end of the stick is Herbert Hoover. The All In The Family theme song had a line that went, "Mister we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again." Of course the line was sung by the redneck bigot Archie Bunker while also praising his old LaSalle, just in case you didn't realize how out of touch he was. A while back I was having a political debate by email, and sent the guy a link to a column by Thomas Sowell, a man I consider to be nothing less than brilliant. The liberal responded by ignoring the content of the column and just pointed out that Sowell was employed at the Hoover Institute. "You remember Hoover don't you?" It was as if that was response enough. Apparently being at the helm of the ship of state when the stock market crashed is unforgivable and negates anything else you might have done.

Ok, Hoover did  make some missteps in trying to jump start the economy. The biggest one was that he tried to jump start the economy. He thought government intervention would be a good thing, but he wasn't able to turn things around in time to save his job. Government spending did not stimulate much of anything through 1931 and '32 and by then he was out of office. I guess it wouldn't bother me so much that Hoover gets the blame for putting us into a prolonged depression, if it weren't for the fact that FDR seems to get all the credit for lifting us out of it. The fact is that FDR came in and tried the exact same failed strategy as Hoover. Moreover, he stubbornly stuck with those interventionist policies for his entire presidency, 13 years. During that span, he managed to drive unemployment up to twice what it had been under Hoover. And he kept it in double digits for a decade, until World War Two bailed us out. Amazingly, he kept getting re-elected as he made things worse and worse. I have to believe that had Hoover been re-elected to three more terms that he would have, at some point, realized that it wasn't working and changed course. Not FDR. He kept at it until he died and yet somehow came away smelling like a rose. Hoover is banished to the dust bin of history for implementing bad economic remedies for a two year period and not getting results. FDR implements the same policies for 13 years, makes things far worse, and ends up on top of the historians all-time greatest list.