Reappraising the Depression Chief

...Hoover seemed to be wherever metallurgical resources were to be found and exploited...

...Reviewed by Henry F. Graff Professor of History, Columbia University Herbert Hoover's reputation has been improving steadily in the last decade—a trend that gives work to historians as well as hope to every politician who has fallen from grace and office...

...His book is not bedtime reading, nor does it contain a gripping story to be pleasurably swallowed in one sitting...

...The electorate was not interested in any of this, because they could not reconcile what Hoover was saying with what they were experiencing daily...

...Not all Presidential reputations, though, have their ups and downs...

...The time to flay Hoover for his failure to rescue the nation from the Depression is now past...

...He was wafted into the White House by a public convinced it had acquired the services of a wonder man it could not be sure it fully deserved...

...The author's account of the "public life" of his subject is based on the most thorough and thoughtful reading of the Hoover sources we have had to date...

...On the eve of his inauguration he confided pre-sciently to a newspaper editor: "I have no dread of the ordinary work of the presidency...

...For if he could come to grief in the Presidency, how could the Republic ever again recruit its highest leadership with confidence...

...Of such stuff the present age does not make its heroes...

...I wanted to ask him if he would find it politically impossible to come to Independence to help dedicate the Truman Library, which was about to open...

...They were full of an energetic purposefulness, almost always channeled into mining enterprises that he turned into glowing successes...

...His failure to perform as expected was not nearly so tragic to him personally as it was for the American people...

...What I do fear is the result of the exaggerated idea the people have conceived of me...

...When he ran for reelection in 1932 his speeches were marked by platitudes, homilies and endless statistics...

...He was on the beach painting, with the arms of his sweater tied around his neck...

...Hoover's own conviction was that if the economy were invaded excessively by government, bureaucratic statism would be the inevitable result, including the loss of personal liberty in all its ramifications...

...He had authority and power because he was wrapped in the mystery that is necessary to both...

...in several fields he was a reformer and an activist—in penology, women's rights, child labor, Indian affairs, public power...

...Above all—and Burner returns to the point again and again?Hoover's ultimate faith and commitment centered on voluntarism in dealing with the economic disaster the country faced, a voluntarism that would preserve societal order and at the same time replenish the fountain-head of individual responsibility...

...If some unprecedented calamity should come upon the nation...

...To the end, Hoover's appeal to the nation (like the appeal of those who espouse these ideas today) was intellectual and bloodless...

...some were vocational (he was a multimillionaire Quaker who desperately had to keep busy despite his wealth...

...His complex man lived a life of constant challenge and risk-taking, infused with spiritual idealism and often incredibly hard work...

...Hoover's lackadaisical campaign efforts proved to be not only a harbinger of political disaster but also the very symbol of it...

...He once vented some of his feelings in a conversation with Harry Truman, who related the episode to me in this fashion: "When I was on vacation in Florida I heard that Mr...

...Herbert Hoover's ultimate standing, then, relies on the effect that the passage of time can have on historical perception...

...Hoover was nearby, so I went to see him...

...Hoover, who lived longer as ex-President than any of his predecessors, almost lived long enough to witness the turnabout he faithfully awaited with Quaker patience and resignation...

...After all,' he said, 'that soldier-boy in the White House isn't listening to me any more than to you.'" Now David Burner's study gives Hoover due and overdue justice—the kind that cannot make even an ardent New Dealer of yore feel outraged or uncomfortable...

...Further, while Hoover's often frenetic efforts to resuscitate the economy foreshadowed important elements of Roosevelt's New Deal, they failed, alas, in their ultimate goal—being neither massive nor dramatic enough...

...Even the Eisenhower Presidency, the first Republican Administration since his own, did not bring much comfort to the Depression Chief...

...some were historical (he had the ill-luck to face the Great Depression with the manner and the style of an Edwardian American...

...some have never risen from their fallen condition and certain lofty ones have never slipped...

...By the beginning of the 20th century he was being spoken of with awe as "young Hoover," the implication being that his youth notwithstanding, he had already made his mark—chiefly as a builder and promoter of companies in many parts of the world...

...He began his term impressively...

...I would be sacrificed to the unreasoning disappointment of a people who expected too much...

...In the eyes of the people, this far outweighed Hoover's achievements...

...Hoover was, in addition, controlled by an iron self-discipline matched by an inborn inability to give the appearance of ever enjoying himself...

...Coming upon the scene just as radio broadcasting was about to cause a political earthquake, just before picture magazines permanently transformed popular journalism, and just before an activist Federal government made civics books obsolete, Hoover was the last of the unknown presidents...

...It is well that the voters at large never knew how often Hoover walked the floor of the White House at night, burdened by problems that refused to yield to traditional methods of management and thinking, of which he was the proven master...

...Burner's balanced book formally ends it (though one must observe that for some time now historians have been giving Hoover increasingly higher marks as an architect of United States foreign policy...

...As head of relief for Beligum in World War I, he also honed his undoubted genius as an administrator...

...Large—even enormous—sums of money were usually at his disposal for investment and development...

...To his credit, he never succumbed to an impulse to believe what was being said and thought about him...

...Although his religious upbringing bound him to be self-effacing, by 1928 Hoover's reputation had become, as Walter Lippmann later said, "a won* of art...

...The new President's goals for America were lofty, even visionary...

...He was the damnedest looking ex-President you ever saw...

...Hoover replied without a moment's hesitation that he would be delighted to come...

...They have a conviction that I am a sort of superman, that no problem is beyond my capacity...

...The steps he took in the area of civil liberties, short and mincing as they were, brought him and the nation onto fresh ground in advancing racial justice...

...If he is known as the first engineer to become Chief Executive, he is also the first businessman...

...His subtitle is too timid a description, however, for what emerges is Hoover the man?armed with poise, self-confidence, high accomplishment, and a first-hand knowledge of several cultures, though still not irresistibly attractive as a person...

...What is required to alter a judgment as profoundly as that of Hoover has been altered is a cataclysmic change in national mood such as is taking place today—indeed, a new Zeitgeist—that makes discarded ideas seem fresh and accepted values appear outmoded and debilitating...

...Hoover had been confronting and wrestling with problems almost from the time of his birth on August 10, 1874...

...It is stirring to read of Hoover's adventurous early years...

...But surely he could not have guessed that it would come so soon—an early arrival that seems to be as much of an historiogra-phic miracle as it is a personal vindication...

...As Hoover begins to take his rightful place in the national Valhalla and ceases to be left standing apart, like a hapless Untouchable, from his fellow Presidents, Americans will be grateful to Burner for his labors...

...Being an engineer by training, he was elected to the Oval Office chiefly to superintend the efficient operation of a flourishing economy...

...Some were severely personal (he was an orphan and had to find his own place and way in the world...

...Writes Burner with what can only be viewed as heavy irony: "Hoover suffocated problems with solutions—if one did not work another would...

...But the Great Depression that fell upon the nation and the world before the Hoovers had even become comfortably settled in the White House totally eclipsed these initial moves of his Administration...

...In fact, his plans had conservative circles worrying he might turn out to be an unbridled Progressive and place roadblocks in the path of American business...