If Al Smith became POTUS in 1929, could Hoover make a comeback in four years?

It was just something I was pondering today. Although the Great Depression happened while Herbert Hoover was president, he really wasn't personally responsible -- not only that, but before he was President the guy had a really good reputation for helping the poor and such. I was just thinking that if Al Smith was elected President and the Great Depression happened on schedule, and Smith proved to be as incompetent at fixing it as Hoover was (plausible, given that Smith was very anti-New-Deal in OTL), is it possible that Hoover could make a roaring comeback in 1932? And if so, how would his presidency be? Would he do a better job from learning from Smith's mistakes, or not?
 
A political return to office such as Grover Cleveland's only happens once in a century - and it isn't happening in the 20th century. Hoover is damaged goods, rightly or wrongly. He isn't going to be supported by his party and the electorate certainly doesn't want him again.
 
Downright ASB, not happening. Only two comebacks like that have been made in the past 150 years: Cleveland and Nixon, and Hoover is definitely not in that league.
 
Pretty much, the Dems have just finally ousted the Bourbon Old Guard from the party leadership with a Smith nomination and are bitterly divided. On KKK they split literally right down the middle, with only 0.5 votes separating the two camps. Hoover got it right in his memoirs, "Peace and Prosperity" was the key, plus a good helping of Know-Nothingism in the South and rural communities. But Smith didn't lose because he was a Catholic- though it certainly didn't help. Any party in that sort of electoral state, which for the Dems would not be the case again until 1971-2, winning an election is ASB.
 
Hoover is not "coming back" if he was never elected in the first place. Although, historically, renominating a defeated presidential candidate is rare. Anyway, Al Smith was probably going to lose anyway in 1928. Now, if the Democratic nominee that year was someone else, maybe things would be different.
 
How does that change the fact that the Democratic Party is split exactly down the middle, in their worst state until the early 1970s? The GOP was the majority party from 1868 to 1932, excepting a Bourbon (Cleveland), and a minority-elected ideological cocktail (Wilson).
 
How does that change the fact that the Democratic Party is split exactly down the middle, in their worst state until the early 1970s? The GOP was the majority party from 1868 to 1932, excepting a Bourbon (Cleveland), and a minority-elected ideological cocktail (Wilson).

It's a fair point, but in all fairness, the GOP was not ideologically a monolith at the time either.
 
Smith wouldn't have botched the Great Depression as poorly as Hoover. I've done a fair amount of reading on Mr. Smith, and his anti-New Deal rhetoric was due to bitterness towards FDR for defeating him at the 1932 convention (and for "stealing" his record as Governor), his closeness to business leaders post-1928, and his defeat in 1928 which made him a much more depressed man. So he'll intervene in the economy; though it probably won't be enough.
 
With only several months in office at the crash, it was more a matter of party guilt than personal guilt, though Hoover botched things about as badly as could be imagined. "Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic" comes to mind.:rolleyes: Look for another Dem to come forward. And would Al Smith want to run again? Otherwise, I can't see the GOP winning in the 1932 Election, unless Al Smith self-destructs completely. Could he have been that bad?

I agree with RogueBeaver though. It would take a catastrophic party split for the GOP to lose in 1928. Grover Cleveland's return wasn't a fluke, however. It was the result of a "stolen election", one of the few in American history. So Cleveland was returned to office, and Benjamin Harrison was reduced to a laughing stock. In the other cases, the loser was eventually elected, or died before they could run again (except for Gore).
 
Hoover is not "coming back" if he was never elected in the first place. Although, historically, renominating a defeated presidential candidate is rare.

But scarcely unheard of. The ones I recall are

Jefferson - lost 1796, won 1800
Pinckney - lost 1804, lost 1808
Jackson - lost 1824, won 1828
Clay - lost 1824, lost 1832, lost 1844
WH Harrison - lost 1836, won 1840
Cleveland - lost 1888, won 1892
Bryan - lost 1896, lost 1900, lost 1908
Dewey - lost 1944, lost 1948
Stevenson - lost 1952, lost 1956
Nixon - lost 1960, won 1968

I agree, though, that the success rate of such "second-chancers" is not terribly high, especially in the 20C.
 
Grover Cleveland's return wasn't a fluke, however. It was the result of a "stolen election", one of the few in American history.


Stolen in what way? It was one where popular and electoral votes went opposite ways, but I've heard no suggestion that it was any more fraudulent that was usual in that era. Harrison didn't lose due to any such allegation, but because -

a) There was a Depression during his term
b) The Populist candidate, James B Weaver, cut into the Republican vote, allowing Cleveland to win in 1892 with a smaller share of the popular vote than he had received in losing to Harrison four years earlier.
 
Not implausible at all.

The depression would have been difficult no matter how Smith dealt with it, and there would be no way for voters to know that Hoover's ideas would have been worse. Hoover could have run the way that Nixon did -- as the smartest and most dynamic candidate available, with fresh ideas to deal with a problem that his predecessor had been unable to solve.
 
Stolen in what way? It was one where popular and electoral votes went opposite ways, but I've heard no suggestion that it was any more fraudulent that was usual in that era. Harrison didn't lose due to any such allegation, but because -

a) There was a Depression during his term
b) The Populist candidate, James B Weaver, cut into the Republican vote, allowing Cleveland to win in 1892 with a smaller share of the popular vote than he had received in losing to Harrison four years earlier.

I think they are claiming that the 1888 election was stolen, not the one in 1892 that returned Cleveland to office.
 
I think 1928 is one of those elections nobody would want to win in retrospect. Like 1976.
 
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