Note to President Bush: Beware of finding comfort in hopes that history will look back on you favorably; if you don’t take care for your historical narrative while in office, no one will bother to give you credit later.
As the great-granddaughter of Herbert Hoover, I know.
Hoover’s stubborn unwillingness to fight for his own legacy may have been honorable, but has resulted in eighty years of bad press. Being related to Hoover has given me a special appreciation for the importance of presidential communication, and in Hoover’s case, an example of how effective a counter-narrative can be. It’s remarkable that forty-five years after his death, contemporary commentators like Rachel Maddow make popsicle stick cut outs of Hoover and sarcastically recycle 75 year old FDR generated talking points. If America knew more about the real Herbert Hoover, Rachel Maddow, John McCain, Paul Krugman, the Wall Street Journal editorial board, and even Dick Cheney would be ashamed of their role reinforcing the stereotype of Hoover as the economic anti-Christ.
No American president’s reputation has been so removed from the larger context of his life accomplishments, or been the recipient of such multi-generational partisan slander as Herbert Hoover. It is my hope that mainstream historical narrative will someday get Hoover right, but his own actions make this a challenging prospect. During his presidency he considered it a misallocation of energy to devote any time to image-tending or public perception (an extension of his Quaker-faith), especially if that energy that could be dedicated to fixing problems (the engineer’s creed).
While I don’t foresee resolution of Hoover’s legacy in the near-term, it is possible that 2009 could fertilize our collective conscience for an eventual re-evaluation of Herbert Hoover’s role in history.
We’ve forgotten the master of emergencies, the godfather of the modern NGO, and the man whose swift and effective response to the worst river flood in American history won him the presidency in 1928. Lost is the Hoover who saved Belgium from starvation in 1914, Bolshevik Russia from famine in 1921, and Poland and Eastern Europe again after WWII. Instead, partisan historians and forgetful citizens heap disproportionate responsibility on his plate for the economic devastation of the 1930s, never mind that he was President for only two years of that decade.
The unlikely coincidence of the current economic crisis with the ‘08 presidential campaign, created an opening for a national debate about the effectiveness of New Deal economics. Thanks to Amity Shlaes’ groundbreaking work in The Forgotten Man, honest historians and economists have begun to debate her thesisÑ that New Deal economics failed to fix the Depression, and likely contributed to making it “Great”.
In all history, but especially with Hoover, one must judge the actor’s decisions based on the information available to them at the time, rather than with the hindsight provided to us thanks to their experience. This is likely to happen only after we fairly debate the effectiveness of New Deal policies and reexamine the mythology of FDR’s presidency. Only then can the narrative of Hoover’s record be rewritten to reflect not just the merits and demerits of his Presidency, but his entire life of service. An unfortunately timed presidency ought not erase a lifetime of contribution to humanity.
As for the few contemporary Republicans who understand and appreciate Hoover – such as former Oregonian Senator Mark HatfieldÑ the Obama wilderness years call us to agree upon common principles which will forge the policy solutions we offer our country tomorrow.
A good place to start is Hoover’s earliest political contribution entitled “American Individualism”, which reflects on the economic, political and social forces that led to America’s ascendance, and which Hoover felt compelled to defend upon returning from Europe after World War I. While socialism seems a remote concern, socialist parties had earned 3% of the vote or better in the four elections through 1920. In the wake of the war’s devastation, collectivist ideas had gained ground in the old European democracies, and were polarizing and destabilizing the politics of the new democracies in Germany, Hungary, and Austria, after violently seizing power in Russia.
In Hoover’s words, it is never “amiss to review the political, economic and spiritual principles through which our country has steadily grown in usefulness and greatness, not only to preserve them from being fouled by false notions, but more importantly that we may guide ourselves in the road of progress.” As Republicans hoping to forge a New Majority, we would do well to begin here.
13 responses so far
1 bartlettb // Jan 20, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Herbert Hoover was a great man pre-1929 and perhaps a great man post-1932. But in between, he made terrible, terrible mistakes that no amount of PR can change.
2 ?Dave? // Jan 20, 2009 at 12:51 pm
“The Forgotten Man” was one of the most important books I read last year. All would do well to read and contemplate it. May I say that I enjoy the way you handle Bill O’Reilly? I look forward to your contributions here. ?Dave?
3 Bob Miller // Jan 20, 2009 at 2:09 pm
With all due respect to a great man, I believe that the criticism of his economic policies in office is partly well-founded. See Amity Shlaes’ critique of Hoover’s performance in “The Forgotten Man”; she doesn’t only have issues with the New Deal that followed.
4 JJWFromME // Jan 20, 2009 at 3:02 pm
It would help if Hoover didn’t have a “liquidationist” as Treasury Secretary: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/rottenness/
“Explanations exist: they have existed for all times, for there is always an easy solution to every problem neat, plausible and wrong.” –H. L. Mencken. This applies well to the reigning market fundamentalism we’ve had under Bush.
5 JJWFromME // Jan 20, 2009 at 3:05 pm
You said: “New Deal economics failed to fix the Depression, and likely contributed to making it “Great”.”
Unfortunately, this is Republican propaganda. See: http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2008/11/lessons-from-th.html
6 JJWFromME // Jan 20, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Writing wrongs indeed.
7 dkarras // Jan 20, 2009 at 5:55 pm
Interesting piece Margaret, and I’m glad to see you’re a part of this new venture! If President Bush hopes that history will vindicate his policies, I think he has to jump-start the analysis by doing what he did not do during his presidency — “devote time to image tending” and “public perception” as you say. Writing his book, creating his ‘policy center’ and continuing to do interviews of the kind he did during the final weeks of his presidency are essential if he wants history to judge him favorably.
8 sinz54 // Jan 20, 2009 at 7:11 pm
I think one more thing that does not reflect well on Hoover, was that Hoover was a Quaker pacifist and an isolationist. He opposed sanctions against Japan for their invasion of Manchuria in 1931. He had endorsed Chamberlain’s giveaway of the Sudetenland to Hitler in 1938. He believed that Nazi Germany would always find peaceful trade with other nations worth more than conquest by war, and he said so publicly. Finally, he said that the greatest force for peace was public opinion–not a strong national defense.
I doubt if George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, or Senator McCain would agree with that. Even Barack Obama has not gone so far.
9 eman123 // Jan 20, 2009 at 8:58 pm
Why is there revisionism going on here about the new deal. What about FDIC insurance? Do you not think that it is currently a useful program? During the depression, state governors had shut down every bank and every bank account was frozen–no one could get a bank loan or cash checks or get at their deposits. Moreover, the programs brought unemployment down from 25 percent to 12 percent. And what ended the depression? It’s not your magical free market but WWII which involved more goverment spending. The market is a great thing but it’s not perfect because it is still controlled by human beings. During emergencies it is imperative that the goverment acts.
10 Neo // Jan 20, 2009 at 11:24 pm
George Bush brought a new tone to Washington, but Washington didn’t return the favor.
Instead it saw his gentlemen-like behaviour as weakness .. to be exploited .. and exploited it was.
It’s the economy .. stupid.
The hard fact is that while the current financial mess is bipartisan (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bought off nearly everybody in both parties) in it’s Genesis, but in the minds of the vast majority of the American people, it is now identified as a Republican mess .. a Hoover redux .. with many of the original progenitors now in control (to repeating the mess all over again).
Silence may be Golden, but what the public doesn’t know .. they will never know.
11 Neo // Jan 20, 2009 at 11:29 pm
Two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression dragged on for almost 15 years.
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx
12 JJWFromME // Jan 21, 2009 at 6:17 am
As usual, conservatives broadcast a very small minority of experts, whom the rest of the community regards as flat earth advocates. They did the same thing with climate change science: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T4UF_Rmlio#t=53m13s
You just hope that the adults arrive on the scene so we can actually fix the problem, as opposed to spending all our time and energy on phony arguments that distract the public.
13 Scaeo // Jan 24, 2009 at 12:10 pm
I think we should all just look it up for ourselves with people from different views of this and let them debate about it. You should never trust the media because they will push their own idea of what they want you believe.
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