Although associated with the Wilson administration due to his relief efforts in Europe and as head of the United States Food Administration during the War, Herbert Hoover had studiously avoided declaring himself a Republican or a Democrat. He was hopeful that one of the two major parties might draft him as their presidential nominee in 1920. On March 6, 1920 Franklin Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor met with Hoover in an attempt to convince him to run as a Democrat with Franklin Roosevelt as the Vice-Presidential nominee. The Hoover-Roosevelt ticket of 1920 would make an excellent alternate history novel! Hoover considered it, but by the end of March declared himself a Republican. He and Franklin Roosevelt remained on friendly terms until they faced off against each other in the election of 1932.
The good fairies gave Hoover many gifts at his birth, but ability as a politician was not one of them. His campaign for the Republican nomination for President came to nothing, with political professionals deriding it as an amateurish effort. Accepting defeat with his usual unflappable grace, Hoover supported Harding after he was nominated by the GOP.
Herbert Hoover was a great American, somewhat like John Quincy Adams, a man who did great things for his country but who was a failure as President, and not really due to his own fault.
The later antipathy between the two was, on Hoover’s side, due to understandable jealousy as to how things turned out, and on FDR’s side, due to a misunderstanding. When Hoover was President he kept FDR waiting for him. FDR was pretending to “stand”, a painful activity given his polio. Hoover, like most politicians, was aware of the true extent of FDR’s disability, and FDR knew that he knew. FDR thought Hoover was keeping him waiting to torture him. In fact Hoover didn’t know he was out there and invited him in as soon as he saw him. If only these two men could have talked it out at a later point!
Coolidge on Hoover:
“[F]or six years that man has given me unsolicited advice—all of it bad.”
If true, that would about double the words Coolidge is recorded to have said during his Presidency.
source, p. 195
via Wikipedia.
and not really due to his own fault.
The rate at which goods and services were being produced in this country (in chained dollars) declined by 25% before federal officialdom elected to change policy, and did so over the objections of the two men who had occupied the position of Secretary of the Treasury. You can blame the two occupants of that office and the Federal Reserve as well. You can blame Congress, provided you remember that over the period running from July 1930 to December 1931, Congress was in session for just three months per customary practice. Why are you letting the President off?
The good fairies gave Hoover many gifts at his birth, but ability as a politician was not one of them.
He won the Republican nomination on the 1st ballot in 1928, taking more than 3/4 of the ballots. He was handed the nomination with only token opposition in 1932, in spite of wretched performance in office. Quite remarkable for someone with indifferent political skills.
He was a man with tremendous organizational skill, but he made poor policy choices when it mattered, as did the Federal Reserve.