AH Challenge: Herbert Hoover is the best president in 20th century

With a POD after January 20 1929, your challenge is to make Herbert hoover the best us president.
 
Basically impossible, unless people don't blame him for the Great Depression. The GD is already here at this point. Knock it back a year, and have him not run. Have him run in 32' against a victorious Al Smith and Hoover = the winner he always deserved to be.
 
Basically impossible, unless people don't blame him for the Great Depression. The GD is already here at this point. Knock it back a year, and have him not run. Have him run in 32' against a victorious Al Smith and Hoover = the winner he always deserved to be.

It's ironic, because if he wasn't president in 28 to 1932, he could have run in 1932 and probably done at least as good a job as Roosevelt did.
 

mowque

Banned
No one will ever agree on "Greatest US President" Unless you have Taft bring Jesus back or something...
 
Luck plays a great deal in the issue and Hoover was unlucky. His biggest mistake was to get elected too early like the Conservative Party's mistake in winning in 1970 and 1992. Franklin D Roosevelt was lucky and in the right place at the right time. Lyndon Johnson was unlucky in inheriting Vietnam and all the blame that went with it, Nixon was unlucky in that he was found out but his own paranoia played a role, Jimmy Carter was unlucky over the hostages but no great president anyway. Greatest President? As outcomes go FDR but if Hitler is taken out of the equation then its a toss up between Teddy Roosevelt and Harry Truman. To answer to question. Win in 1932 and lose in 1928 so the Democrats get the blame for the recession
 
Even better.

Let Silent Cal run again in 1928, against Al Smith. Al Smith wins; then the depression breaks out in 1929. Do that and then Hoover, who is a business prodigy and a hero for feeding starving Belgians in WW1 as well as a Secy of Commerce in previous administrations, has a powerful argument to be president.

Hoover then makes an internationalist trading system, knocks out Smoot-Hawley and fights the depression by reinvigorating global trade. If Hoover does this quickly enough, he might even be able to keep Japan from going totally insane in China by strengthening the hands of the moderates...
 
If HH leapt into action as soon as the Depression hit with his own Keynsian programmes he could be seen as the hero by the end of his term.
 
If HH leapt into action as soon as the Depression hit with his own Keynsian programmes he could be seen as the hero by the end of his term.

Hmmm. Trouble is, IIRC, the intellectual groundwork for Keynsian economics was only laid down in the "General Theory", published in 1936. I've heard it said that even the Roosevelt administration wasn't a huge fan of such programmes, thus the persistent output gap throughout the thirties.
 
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