The curse of the Great Depression

The final president in this low tier is Herbert Hoover.

Calvin Coolidge’s decision not to run for a second full term left Hoover the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination in his party. In the election of 1928, Hoover was the first Republican to pioneer a “southern strategy,” and attacked Democratic candidate Al Smith on his Catholicism and his position in favor of the repeal of Prohibition.

Hoover is most often remembered as the president who presided over the start of  the Great Depression, but he did not cause the Great Depression, nor did he fail to act in response to Black Tuesday. He ranks among the worst presidents today because his actions in fact led a worsening of the Depression.

Hoover did fear too much government involvement, but by all accounts, two major pieces of legislation passed in response to the stock market crash – the Smoot-Hawley Tariff and the Davis-Bacon Act – were largely policy failures. Attacking Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” which had immense popularity across the nation, Hoover was soundly defeated by Roosevelt in 1932.