![[Abridged] Presidential Histories - 31.A.) The political evolution of Herbert Hoover, an interview with Thomas Schwartz](https://storage.googleapis.com/goodpods-images-bucket/episode_images/6525cc0e1e417ed39f762f8124d08715bf80d60045828e7dbdde538ee5b7f9b9.avif)
31.A.) The political evolution of Herbert Hoover, an interview with Thomas Schwartz
[Abridged] Presidential Histories
01/16/23
•58m
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"My country owes me nothing. It gave me, as it gives every boy and girl, a chance. It gave me schooling, independence of action, opportunity for service and honor.” - Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover entered government a self-described progressive. But by the time the end of his life, his opposition to the New Deal had some calling him a father of modern conservativism. What's the truth of the matter? Join me as I talk to Thomas Schwartz, director of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library-Museum, about the evolution of Herbert Hoover and whether he changed, or whether the country changed around him.
Previous Episode
31.) Herbert Hoover 1929-1933
January 2, 2023
•57m
"In America today, we are nearer a final triumph over poverty than is any other land." - Herbert Hoover.
~~~
Herbert Hoover made his fortune as a mining engineer, made his name as a humanitarian leader, and lost his reputation as a president. Nobody knew the great Depression was coming when they elected Hoover, but the great irony of his presidency is that, after savings millions of lives as a humanitarian during national and global emergencies, he's the first guy most Americans would have turned to if they had known it was coming. He went above and beyond what any previous president had dared try to combat a financial panic, but it wasn't enough.
Follow along as Hoover goes from being an orphan, to a member of Stanford's inaugural class, to the gold fields of Australia and China, and the boardrooms of Britain, only to shed his business identity for a 15-year career as a humanitarian from Belgium to the Mississippi, and ultimately win the White House, only for a series of economic calamities known as the Great Depression to destroy his administration and reputation. By the time Hoover leaves the White House, his name will be a synonym for homeless encampments.
Bibliography
1. Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times - Kenneth Whyte
2. FDR – Jean Edward Smith
3. Calvin Coolidge - David Greenberg
4. The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made – Patricia O’Toole
5. Warren G Harding – John W. Dean
6. Truman – David McCullough
7. The President and the Assassin: McKinley, Terror, and Empire at the Dawn of the American Century – Scott Miller
8. Eisenhower in War and Peace – Jean Edward Smith
9. William Howard Taft – Jeffrey Rosen
Next Episode
"It simply comes to this: men hate me more after they work for me than before. They don't need think they are coming to a snap. They're coming to a perfect hell and I am the devil." - Herbert Hoover, 1897, written from the gold fields of Australia.
The United States had seen generals, publishers, history professors, and lawyers - oh so many lawyers - become president. But it had never had a businessman president before Herbert Hoover. David E. Hamilton, a history professor at the University of Kentucky, discusses how Hoover's background in business gave him the tools to handle some aspects of the presidency, but left him entirely unequipped to handle others.
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