Which party is closer to Herbert Hoover?

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Mister, we can't use a man like Herbert Hoover again.

Featured Topic | Posted 22 weeks 4 days ago

Which party is closer to Herbert Hoover?

Herbert Hoover is a catch-all for political and economic ineptitude in the face of a fiscal crisis. With the United States facing its latest economic slowdown, both parties are pointing fingers and accusing the other of embracing Hoover in some way.

Democrats slammed President Bush's recent speech at the New York Economic Club, where he said the economy is looking at some "tough times," but ultimately it will bounce back. "Instead of cheerleading and reacting with tepid measures, the administration should act boldly and decisively to prevent the looming foreclosure crisis from having catastrophic consequences for our economy and our markets," Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., said.

And on Fox News, Sen. Charles Schumer, chairman of Congress' joint economic committee, compared Bush to former president Herbert Hoover, whose reputation suffered after he took little action in response to the 1929 stock market crash that triggered the Great Depression.

But is it true? Is Bush the second coming of Herbert Hoover? Or are Democrats closer to Hoover than they realize? And what, if anything, should the Great Depression teach U.S. policymakers today about regulating the economy?

Ben likes: Hoover's ghost haunts Democrats

Amity Shlaes/Bloomberg

Who is doing such pressuring these days? Not Bush, but that Hoovermonger, Charles Schumer. Schumer used the Bear Stearns collapse to call for "a greater degree of regulation" in the industry that is relevant this time, investment banking.

Hoover knew free trade was beneficial. But his party, the Grand Old Party, was the tariff party. So in spite of himself, he signed a big new tariff, the Smoot-Hawley act, triggering retaliation from U.S. trading partners.

For many decades now, Democrats have contrasted Hoover's concession to protectionists unfavorably with free-trade legislation written by Roosevelt and his globalization guru, Secretary of State Cordell Hull.

Today it is the Democrats who are doing wrong, and they know better. Candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are both internationalists by temperament, yet they seem to be in a race to see who can repeal the North American Free Trade Agreement first.

Joel likes: Move over, Hoover

Douglas Brinkley/Washington Post

Though Bush may be viewed as a laughingstock, he won't have the zero-integrity factors that have kept Nixon and Harding at the bottom in the presidential sweepstakes. Oddly, the president whom Bush most reminds me of is Herbert Hoover, whose name is synonymous with failure to respond to the Great Depression. When the stock market collapsed, Hoover, for ideological reasons, did too little. When 9/11 happened, Bush did too much, attacking the wrong country at the wrong time for the wrong reasons. He has joined Hoover as a case study on how not to be president.