The Man Who Created the Ex-Presidency

Hint: It wasn't Jimmy Carter

At the risk of appearing unseemly, it won’t be long before we hear of the passing of America’s oldest living former President, James Earl Carter Jr. Elected in 1976 and soundly defeated by Ronald Reagan in 1980, Carter has been in hospice care for several months after experiencing a broken hip and cancer-related surgeries. He is 98, and we wish him well, with all due respect.

Carter will be appropriately feted not for his presidency but for his impressive ex-presidency. He created the Carter Center to advance human rights, a hallmark of his foreign policy aside from the Camp David Accords. From building homes for Habitat for Humanity to leading one of the most successful federal commissions following the messy 2000 presidential election (see: Florida) between George W. Bush and Albert Gore Jr., Carter has earned senior statesman status.

He has always remained a loyal Democrat, speaking at national party conventions and criticizing Republicans, including being a 2016 election denier. Carter bought into the Russia collusion hoax and claimed that Trump would not have won without Russian interference, which was never proven. He was never above the political fray. Neither are most other former Presidents (George W. Bush may be an exception, although he is no fan of Donald Trump, who defeated his younger brother, Jeb!, for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination).

The media will rush to declare Carter not just America’s longest-serving ex-president at 45 years but its best, “inventing” the modern ex-presidency. That would be wrong.

Herbert Hoover beat him to it. And was arguably more accomplished during his 31-year “ex-presidency.”

Mention Hoover’s name, and he’s mostly negatively associated with the Great Depression. He had been President not even nine months when the New York Stock Exchange crashed on October 29th, 1929 (he was sworn in as our 31st President on March 4th). Hoover previously served as Commerce Secretary (and “undersecretary of everything else”) under Presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge. He warned Coolidge about unbridled, out-of-control speculation in the stock market. The warnings went unheeded, and the rest is history.

Here’s how Time Magazine describes Hoover’s presidency in a feature about the 10 “most forgettable” presidents.

The 31st President is best remembered for his disastrous response to the stock-market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression, pooh-poohing government intervention in favor of self-reliance as millions suffered.

Ouch.

Hoover didn’t sit idly by as the global Great Depression unfolded and worsened with bank failures and 25 percent unemployment during his four-year presidency. However, he may be guilty of underestimating its effect. It didn’t get much better under his successor’s presidency, Franklin Roosevelt, until the US entered World War II at the beginning of his third four-year term. Still, Roosevelt won support for “doing something.” Hoover tried various ways to stimulate the economy but made one and possibly two fatal mistakes that many argue made things worse, along with his stubborn resistance against broadening federal relief programs. He credited his penchant for not showing emotion to his Quaker upbringing in Iowa and Oregon (his parents died when he and his two siblings were very young).

Good luck finding a photo of Hoover smiling.

First, Hoover signed the “Smoot Hawley” bill, named after US Senators Reed Smoot (R-UT) and Willis Hawley (R-OR), that raised tariffs on foreign goods, which other countries were too happy to reciprocate, resulting in a trade war. Republicans early in the 20th Century believed tariffs helped domestic farmers and manufacturers, and Hoover campaigned on that in 1928. Second, he proposed tax increases to keep the budget balanced. The President once dubbed “Wonder Boy” by his predecessor and won global accolades for saving the lives of as many as 20 million children after World War I was forever marred.

Coolidge didn’t like Hoover’s activist approach to government.

Some say he made a third mistake. He opposed direct payments to the unemployed from the federal treasury, clinging to his belief in volunteerism, local charity, and cooperation. After all, that’s how he successfully engineered food relief programs first in occupied Belgium during World War I, then afterward across primarily Central and Eastern Europe. His heroics were lauded after World War I, making him a favorite in GOP and even some Democratic circles (he led the Food Administration under President Woodrow Wilson). His refusal to open federal spigots was punished by voters in 1932. His successor, Roosevelt, and a massive Democratic majority in Congress eagerly opened the floodgates for a grateful and desperate population. Unemployment assistance was a state and local issue, Hoover believed.

Some Senate Republicans initially opposed the progressive Hoover’s nomination as Commerce Secretary, seeing him as untrustworthy after he served as “food czar” during the Wilson Administration. He was confirmed anyway.

Herbert Hoover at his Waldorf Astoria hotel office in 1958. He died in 1964 at age 90. Source: Wikipedia.

Hoover, having been soundly defeated in 1932 (winning just six states) after his landslide win just four years earlier, left the presidency a bitter man. He remained highly critical of Roosevelt’s New Deal programs and hoped to emerge as the GOP nominee again in 1936 and 1940. Republicans instead chose Kansan Alf Landon and Wendell Willkie. He authored books critical of Roosevelt’s “New Deal.” After his wife, Lou Henry, died in 1944, he moved from his beloved Stanford University - where he had been part of its first graduating class, earning a degree in mining engineering and establishing the Hoover Institution - to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. Hoover amassed a fortune as a mining geologist, leading projects in Australia and China and living a considerable time abroad, including in London.

Hoover’s political resurrection began after Roosevelt died in 1945 and was succeeded by Harry S. Truman. Following World War II, Truman asked Hoover to reprise his post-World War I relief efforts, which he did successfully. Hoover was then asked in 1947 to lead a commission on reorganizing the federal government's Executive Branch. A year before, Senate GOP leader Robert Taft Jr. - once a Hoover protege - engineered the enactment of the Legislative Reorganization Act.

The famous Hoover Commission saw 196 of its 273 recommendations enacted by Congress and Presidents Truman and Eisenhower. Despite favoring Taft over Eisenhower during the 1952 GOP presidential nomination, Ike asked Hoover to lead a second commission in 1953, when the former President was 80. One of his recommendations led to the creation of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, now the Department of Health and Human Services.

I wonder what Hoover would think of the agency now?

“Do more with less: that was the theme of the commission's reports, each written by Hoover,” reports the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum. “Not all his ideas were approved, but Harry Truman supported enough to see that more than 70 percent of Hoover's recommendations were enacted into law.” Truman and Hoover became good friends despite political differences.

A brief walk through Hoover’s library and museum in West Branch, Iowa, where I recently visited, tells a side of Hoover that is largely unknown and certainly unappreciated. He was a champion for children. He served as chair of Boys Clubs and crafted a “Child Bill of Rights” reflecting his experience as an orphan growing up in Iowa and Oregon. During the 1920s, he served as the American Child Health Association president.

Source: Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, photo by the author

Carter and Hoover had a couple of things in common. Both were trained as engineers. Carter, a graduate of the Naval Academy, became a part of the late Hyman Rickover’s nuclear submarine program. Hoover was a mining engineer. Both presidencies are considered “forgettable” failures, leading to landslide defeats by charismatic challengers. Both had noteworthy accomplishments - Carter deregulated the trucking and airline industries, while Hoover crafted the compact that led to the construction of the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River - overshadowed by other events and poor policy decisions.

And neither man would be chosen to lead their respective political parties today. Carter would be seen as too conservative; Hoover, too activist. But both used their time after office well to establish themselves as accomplished senior statesmen and examples that future ex-presidents would be wise to follow.