The Progressive Professor

Recently, President Donald Trump stated that he did not want to be rated worse than former President Herbert Hoover, who was President during the early years of the Great Depresssion, nearly a century ago.

Well, the news is that despite Herbert Hoover’s low ranking, between number 31 and number 36, so in the bottom third of Presidents, he ranks higher than Donald Trump who is no better in scholarly polls than tied for third from the bottom with Franklin Pierce, only above Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan, and in some rankings, at the very bottom.

Herbert Hoover had his faults:

Slow to react to the crash on Wall Street in October 1929, and unwilling to abandon “Laissez Faire” Economics, and presiding over the worst years of the Great Depression.

Rejecting hundreds of economists who warned against the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930, which he signed, making the downturning economy much worse, and adding to the decline in international trade.

Came across as a rigid and inflexible personality.

Had inability to appeal for public support, and his lack of public image.

But at the same time, Hoover did not preside over massive corruption;

did not take America into a major war;

did not promote nativism and prejudice in massive numbers;

was a highly educated and accomplished man in public service before his Presidency, and in his earlier business career, and had a stellar reputation before he reached the Presidency;

and had a level of dignity and statesmanship—all the opposite of Donald Trump!

Trump claimed in his first term to be isolationist, but has been anything but that, antagonizing European and Asian allies, and reviving a sense of American imperialism in the Western Hemisphere, while Hoover, for right or for wrong, practiced an isolationist policy.

Ultimately, Herbert Hoover was a decent gentleman, who helped promote reorganization of the federal government with the Hoover Commission under President Harry Truman in the post World War II period, and acted in a dignified manner.

So Donald Trump does not match Herbert Hoover, as low as Hoover is ranked, and will always be rated lower in history than Herbert Hoover.