BAD LUCK OF A GOOD MAN

In the twelve years between Woodrow Wilson and FDR, there were altogether three presidents, two of whom can be simply dismissed as failed presidents, but the third one, Herbert Hoover, cannot be dismissed like the other two, and he clearly deserves this separate entry.

Whether America has been seen as a noble enemy or the devil himself, Herbert Hoover holds a very special place in the heart of the Russian nation, even if present-day Russians have no knowledge of this fact. Here is what Maxim Gorky, the one who coined the phrase “the Yellow Devil,” to characterize America, wrote in his 1922 letter to Hoover, who was in charge of the American Relief Administration at the time: “Your help will enter history as a unique, gigantic achievement, worthy of the greatest glory, which will long remain in the memory of millions of Russians whom you have saved from death.”

He was referring to Hoover’s personal initiative, remarkably, against significant domestic criticism, to send food and other aid to the famine-stricken Russia at the end of her devastating Civil War. When lambasted as a “Bolshevik helper,” Hoover purportedly replied: “Twenty million people are starving. Whatever their politics, they shall be fed!” More on this story shortly below.

Prior to assuming the presidency of the United States, Herbert Hoover had been lauded as the most brilliant man in America, the Great Engineer and the Great Humanitarian. He received all these marks in full earnest. It was on the account of his stellar reputation that he was swept into the White House in one of the greatest landslides in American history. Ironically, in just a couple of years he would fall from the best to the worst, and even his well-earned distinctions and laudatory nicknames would be thrown in his face as mockery and vitriolic invective. The reason for this astonishing reversal of fortune is easy to deduce for all who have the timeline of American history at their fingertips: Not that he could have done anything differently about it to thwart the inevitable; considering his total misjudgment of the event, he had the sad misfortune to become the President of the Great Depression.

A talented mining engineer and inventor, prior to WWI Hoover had been working as an independent mining consultant, in which capacity he was required to travel around the world, and thus in August 1914 he found himself in Europe, where he immediately organized, drawing largely from the volunteer effort, a successful evacuation of some 120,000 stranded Americans back home, followed by an extensive humanitarian effort in Belgium, for which he was greatly appreciated and honored. Thus involved, he realized that his career as a mining engineer was now over, and the time of public service had begun.

And indeed, in 1917 Woodrow Wilson appointed Hoover head of the United States Food Administration, in which capacity Hoover served with remarkable distinction showing bold initiative and extraordinary ability to solve problems. After the war Hoover headed the American Relief Administration, and being a hereditary Quaker himself, used the newly formed American Friends Service Committee as his tool of managing relief to all those who needed it, including the defeated Germans and the “backstabbing” Russians. ("Backstabbing" here refers to the 1918 Peace of Brest-Litovsk between Soviet Russia and Germany which had taken Russia out of the war against Germany, allowing the Germans to regroup and almost win World War I before suddenly and rather mysteriously collapsing.) At the end of 1918, The New York Times named Hoover “One of the Ten Most Important Living Americans,”--- and that was of course a full decade before he was to assume the Presidency of the United States.

As one of the high-profile Americans, Hoover was courted by the Democratic Party in 1920, but he refused to join it, having been a Republican all his life. (His previous brief membership in the Progressive Party in 1912, due to his personal admiration and support of Teddy Roosevelt, can hardly be counted as a defection from the Republican fold!) Thus he declared himself a Republican Presidential Candidate in the Californian primary, but having lost in his home state, he threw his support behind the Republican nominee W. Harding, even though privately he did not think much of him.

Having won the presidency, Warren Harding appointed Hoover Secretary of Commerce, in which position he would excel. Indeed, historians have recognized that Hoover was the best Secretary of Commerce in US history.

President Harding died in office in 1923, succeeded by Calvin Coolidge, who won the next year’s election, but refused to run for a second term in 1928. At this point Hoover stepped in, and won the presidency with a landslide 58% of the vote. In his Inaugural Address he famously said:

“Given the chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, we shall soon with the help of God be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation.”

Several months into his presidency, the Great Depression struck and demolished Hoover’s place in history.

It is so easy with our hindsight, and with tons of literature written about it, to see the Great Depression for what it was. Hoover did not have our hindsight. He completely misunderstood this cataclysmic event as just some more or less normal bump in the road. As a result, he completely mishandled it, earning devastatingly harsh and rather unfair thrashing from FDR, who would forever hold a grudge against Hoover for not doing what Roosevelt would start doing from day one as the next president of the United States. It was only after FDR’s death that Hoover’s former merits would be remembered, and he would be allowed to reenter public service in minor, but symbolically important capacities, such as the Hoover Commission for instance. Having died at the old age of 90, he lived to see his tattered reputation somewhat patched up, although the most visible job of his public career was understandably beyond redemption.

In my view of him, I deplore some of the more extreme outbursts of Hoover’s anti-Communist rhetoric, but on the other hand, I find understandable his insistence on neutrality vis-à-vis Nazi Germany. Overall, I find his public service record generally admirable, and I lament his rotten luck, as the President caught up in the clutches of the Great Depression.