THREE PRESIDENTS: AND WHY THEY FAILED

Donald Trump likes to think of himself as a latter day Andrew Jackson. He frequently poses for cameras with a portrait of Jackson in the background. The truth is that although his and Jackson’s election are separated by a hundred and eighty eight years there are some commonalities between the two elections. Both were “surge” elections featuring large numbers of southern “working class” voters (frontiersmen in 1828) who had not previously voted. Probably a study could be done that would show that many of the rally goers who voted for Trump in 2016 were actually descendants of people who had voted for Jackson in 1828.

So, Trump would be correct if he were to say that the dynamics of the two elections had a faint similarity. That does not mean that the two candidates would have had much in common. The endlessly vigorous military hero Jackson certainly would have found little in common with Donald Trump and his famous lack of martial enthusiasm. The old and tired lead-poisoned Jackson and the bombastic, ill-informed Trump both have seemed to act on personal agendas with little knowledge of the governments they led.

Let us think about a presidential comparison less often made: Exactly one hundred years after Jackson won in 1828, the Republicans nominated Herbert Clark Hoover. Hoover in many ways would seem to be the polar opposite of Donald Trump. Born to a poor farm family in Iowa, Hoover was orphaned early, raised by a distant uncle. Yet through sheer ability and a monumental appetite for work, he graduated with an engineering degree from Stanford (its first graduating class in engineering) and rose quickly to direct ever larger engineering projects (he was big in dams) all over the world.

Hoover put his administrative genius to work by being made responsible for directing food relief for a starving Europe after World War I. He then served as Secretary of Commerce under both Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge. During those years his frenetic appetite for work, and his drive to increase government efficiency, made his department a rare center of innovation. They also made him the logical progressive Republican candidate for the election of 1928.

Once in office the popular data driven new president quickly attempted to push through a list of complicated reforms (his office hours sometimes stretched to sixteen hours a day). Those reforms were sabotaged by politically savvy Republicans in the House and the Senate. Responding to very religiously conservative citizens back in their states, they knew they would best survive by resisting change.

Hoover, probably more than any previous president, had a really sophisticated understanding of economics. He understood that a good deal of the then current economic malaise was caused by the reparations settlements in Europe after the Great War. And, having been responsible for feeding unemployed millions after World War I, he was unusually aware of the dangers unemployment posed for working people.

With hindsight, it is obvious that Hoover’s refusal to involve the federal government directly in job creation and food distribution helped guarantee failure. His efforts to create voluntary private banking reform (he wanted large private banks to provide capital to weaker ones), was doomed to fail. As unemployment grew and businesses died, the supremely capable manager in the White House found himself an object of hatred. He had to live through the humiliation of being replaced after the 1932 election by Democrat Franklin Roosevelt who Hoover viewed as an amiable lightweight.

So, what has Donald Trump in common with Jackson or with Hoover? The answer is, probably very little. Hoover, particularly, seems almost an opposite. We can anticipate, though, that there will be a commonality in the after-effects of their conduct in office.

Jackson was a hero to the uneducated whites (most could neither read nor write) on the southern frontier. They needed his help. But, because of his hatred for Nicholas Biddle, the aristocratic president of the national bank, Jackson refused to renew the bank’s charter. Without the national bank thousands lost their homes, whole towns disappeared. Poorer supporters of Jackson were hurt most of all.

Herbert Hoover and now Donald Trump face economic depression. Hoover, always prepared, understood what was happening but failed to halt its effects. His stiff moralistic public persona and his perceived association with wealthy businessmen (he had a cabinet of millionaires), made him an easy target for the poor and unemployed who felt themselves abandoned.

Donald Trump faces a depression too. No one thinks he caused the depression, but no one thinks he is working very hard to eliminate the cause, the coronavirus. As his nightly appearances on television make ever clearer, he never took the pandemic as seriously as he did the collapse of his beloved stock market. Ironically, Hoover and now Trump ninety years later may both end by failing because they would not effectively involve the federal government.

There is tide in these things. By the time Hoover left office, he was a hated figure. No recounting of his noble efforts seemed to lessen that hate. He lived to be ninety, worked for other presidents as an advisor. For many, he never really outlived being the man who caused the Depression.

The tide may be turning for Donald Trump too. At this point nobody is accusing Donald Trump of causing the pandemic or the resulting closing down of the economy. They are going to accuse him, as critics did earlier with Hoover, of not really deploying the federal government. With Hoover not doing so was a matter of principle. With Trump it will be seen first as inattention and then as incompetence. Incompetence goes beyond politics. It is in the end, with more than fifty thousand dead, not forgivable.

H.J. Rishel 4/25/2020