"The Ordeal of Herbert Hoover," Richard Norton Smith and Timothy Walch
Smith and Walch can be excused their sympathy for the President who "became a scapegoat" for the 1929 Wall Street Crash and the ensuing Great Depression of the thirties. They both headed the Hoover Library and authored books on the 31st President. Scapegoat though he may have been, Hoover was not all that bad, as Mother Jones said this month. Though his century's Depression happened on his watch, he is never listed as The Worst President In American History.
Until recently, that signal honor has belonged to Hoover's immediate predecessors, Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge:
Dr. Eric Foner, Columbia University history professor, "He's The Worst Ever," Washington Post, December 3, 2006
So now you know who "He" is. No wonder he stayed away from the Convention.
Continuing our parallel history lesson, we know who followed Herbert Hoover in the White House, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who managed to pull the country out of the Depression, bring the US to victory after getting caught short on December 7 1941 at Pearl Harbor, and get elected four times as President. Roosevelt was a Democrat. Hoover (plus Harding and Coolidge) were Republicans. (Though you might be confused: didn't McCain, in his speech at the Republican Convention, refer to the GOP as the "party of Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan"? He was referring, you see, to that other Roosevelt, Teddy, who, like Sarah Palin, used to enjoy shooting and gutting wild animals).
So, if or when "The GOP's December Surprise" (see James K. Galbraith in the July/August Mother Jones) economic shoe drops, conveniently after Americans (or Diebold) have selected their next President in November, will we have an Obama/Biden team at the helm, ready to apply Democratic solutions to a mess that the Republicans have concocted? Or will a McCain/Palin administration take care of America the way that their party enabled Enron and the sub-prime crisis to happen? What would a President McCain say to the millions that are already out of their homes, or living in drastically devalued property? "Tough luck, whiners?"
Or would you entrust a VP Palin to apply fiscally responsible solutions to the US Federal budget, like she did when she was mayor of Wasilla?
Palin left behind almost $19 million In long-term debt, compared to none before she was mayor. In fiscal 2003-the last fiscal year Palin approved the budget-the bonded long-term debt was $18,635,000. In fiscal 1996-the year before Palin took control of the budget-there was no general obligation debt.
[Source: Wasilla Comprehensive Annual Financial Report 2003, Table 10]
If that sounds familiar, it's because you remember what happened in 2000, when Republican George W. Bush inherited the Democratic budget surplus - and proceeded to squander it all and put the United States economy into the Peking Pawn Shop. He too preached one thing, and did the opposite.
In the 1929-1932 Hoover reaction to Crash & Depression, his free-market Republican reaction only deepened America's economic woes. Hoover was not an uncaring man, and had lots of experience in governance. But his judgment was wrong. He was a Republican. It was his nature.
If you want to see for yourself, just read the Obama Democratic Convention speech, and then compare with the McCain Republican Convention speech. And then consider that McCain is baffled by economics. Who do you want in charge when that shoe drops? I vote for the "party of Roosevelt" - Franklin Delano Roosevelt, "FDR" - and his Democratic administration that brought America out of its previous darkest hour.