Why Every President Sucked

No. 31 · The Presidents

Herbert Hoover’s Biggest Failures

1929–1933

He signed the tariff that hurt trade, told the country the worst was over, and sent tanks after veterans.

Who was Herbert Hoover?

Herbert Hoover was the 31st president of the United States, serving from March 4, 1929 to March 4, 1933. Born in West Branch, Iowa in 1874 to a Quaker family, he was orphaned by age ten and sent to live with an uncle in Oregon. He was in the first graduating class at Stanford, became a wealthy mining engineer, and then a global figure as the organizer of Belgian relief during the First World War. As Secretary of Commerce he led the federal response to the 1927 Mississippi flood. He won the 1928 election in a landslide, promising the nation’s prosperity would continue.

Why is Herbert Hoover considered one of the worst presidents?

Hoover has ranked between 34th and 37th in every major survey since 2000. C-SPAN’s 2021 survey of historians ranked him 36th out of 44, and Siena’s 2022 survey of presidential scholars placed him 37th of 45. The category data is the story. In C-SPAN’s 2021 survey he ranked dead last, 44th of 44, on economic management, below even Buchanan. Siena’s scholars also rated him last of 45 on handling the U.S. economy.

Historians do not think he was incompetent. He ranks 20th on administrative skills. They think he was wrong, at the worst possible moment. In my book, Hoover’s entry is about the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, which I argue made the Depression worse. What follows is the record around it, with the song I wrote for him threaded through.

Chords: Am, Em, G, D

Started to feel a little under the weather
But before we'd gotten fully depressed
the Hawley Smoot bill came along

1. He talked the economy up

On October 25, 1929, the day after Black Thursday, Hoover told reporters that “the fundamental business of the country, that is the production and distribution of commodities, is on a sound and prosperous basis.” On May 1, 1930, he told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, “I am convinced we have now passed the worst.” Neither was true. In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt quoted the first statement back at him on the campaign trail.

Notice what is missing. The famous line “prosperity is just around the corner” has no documented source, and reference books list it as a misattribution that became a Democratic jibe. He did not need to say it. His real quotes did the job.

2. He signed Smoot-Hawley over the objections of more than 1,000 economists

Hoover had asked Congress for a limited tariff revision to help farmers. The bill that emerged raised duties broadly, and a petition from about a thousand economists, drafted by the Chicago economist Paul Douglas, urged him to veto it. The Senate’s own history office calls the bill “among the most catastrophic acts in congressional history.” Hoover signed it on June 17, 1930. Trading partners retaliated, Canada among them, and world trade shrank. Voters threw both Reed Smoot and Willis Hawley out of Congress in 1932.

Promised to put us back to work, couldn't have been more wrong
Hoover shot the first bullet
In the global tariff war

3. He watched the banks fall

Roughly 9,000 banks suspended operations between 1930 and 1933, though the count varies by source. The money supply fell by nearly 30 percent, prices fell about 10 percent a year, and, according to Ben Bernanke, unemployment rose from about 3 percent to nearly 25 percent and real output fell nearly 30 percent. Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz argued the Federal Reserve turned a recession into a catastrophe, and Bernanke, at a 2002 conference honoring Friedman, told him the Fed was to blame and was sorry.

In fairness, the Fed was legally independent. Hoover’s own contributions were smaller but real: he defended the gold standard, and in 1932 he signed a major tax increase in the middle of a deflation. Barry Eichengreen’s Golden Fetters argues that gold-standard orthodoxy carried the Depression around the world.

Tried to protect us from overseas
And instead he bankrupted our citizenry

4. His relief was too small and too late

Hoover believed in voluntarism and local relief, and for two years he resisted large federal aid. In January 1932 Congress created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which lent to banks and railroads, and in July the Emergency Relief and Construction Act expanded federal lending. By then the damage was done, and the public saw a president helping banks while families lined up for bread.

5. The Bonus Army

In the summer of 1932, thousands of World War I veterans camped in Washington to demand early payment of a bonus. On July 28, the Attorney General ordered police to clear them from federal buildings on Pennsylvania Avenue. Police shot two veterans, William Hushka and Eric Carlson, who died. The D.C. commissioners then asked for troops, and Hoover authorized the Army. General Douglas MacArthur led infantry, cavalry under Major George Patton and six tanks against the veterans, with Major Dwight Eisenhower as his aide.

Hoover twice sent word that the troops were not to cross the Anacostia bridge that night. MacArthur’s aides said he ignored the message; Eisenhower later said MacArthur never received it. Troops crossed, and the camp was burned. An infant also died, and contemporaries blamed the gas, though the Army report cited another cause. Hoover did not order the burning of the camp, but he took public responsibility for the operation. It destroyed whatever was left of his reputation as a humanitarian.

it raised the tariff to 42, the highest we would do
tried to protect our business
forgetting they're made of Americans
that don't just buy American

6. Hoovervilles and a landslide

The Depression’s slang named itself after him. Shantytowns became “Hoovervilles,” newspapers used as blankets were “Hoover blankets,” and empty pockets turned inside out were “Hoover flags.” In November 1932, Roosevelt beat him 472 electoral votes to 59. Over the four months before the inauguration, bank holidays spread, starting with Nevada’s on October 31 and Michigan’s in February, while Hoover pressed the president-elect to commit to his policies.

the other countries raised tariffs high
said, I'll show you mine
I'll show you mine
boy I'm feeling depressed

In fairness

Unemployment peaked in 1933, after Hoover left office. The Reconstruction Finance Corporation survived into the New Deal, and Hoover Dam was begun under his watch. Historians such as David Kennedy have portrayed him as an activist whose ideas anticipated parts of the New Deal, not a do-nothing. The 1,000 economists and the Senate’s verdict still land on the tariff, though.

After the White House

Hoover lived for 31 more years. He led relief missions after the Second World War and chaired two Hoover Commissions on reorganizing the federal government, in 1947 and 1953. He died on October 20, 1964, at 90.

Hear the song

Read the full lyrics, browse all 43 songs, read more articles, or head to the book.

Sources

By Eric Olsen · Published