Which US President had a tougher re-election atmosphere: Hoover or Bush Sr.?

More tough re-election?

  • Hoover

    Votes: 44 100.0%
  • Bush Sr.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    44
Both Bush Sr. (1992) and Hoover (1932) had a cripping economy during their last year in office, and both went up against somewhat charismatic Democratic opponents in Bill Clinton and FDR.

Who do you think would have had a harder time being re-elected?
 
One guy could point out that he won a glorious and righteous war to protect the weak from the strong, the other guy... can't*.

Usually the guy who had won a war will have an easier time.

*like, Hoover's last major accomplishment before becoming president was what he did during post WWI:
Alistair Cooke's America said:
Somebody had to take the blame, and it fell on Coolidge's unlucky successor, President Herbert Clack Hoover, a world-famous engineer who had done mighty work ten years earlier organizing the feeding of starving Europe. He had been at Versailles, where John Maynard Keynes had called him the only man there who "imported into the councils of Paris... precisely that atmosphere of reality, knowledge, magnanimity and disinterestedness which, if they had found in other quarters also, would have given us the Good Peace." But now Hoover was simply the football coach whose plays lost the big game, and his bitter memorial was the shanty towns of the unemployed down the rivers of scores of cities.
 
Not even close. The “GREAT DEPRESSION”’ vs a recession. A President who won a war vs a President who presided over greatest economic collapse in modern history its first year that more or less defined the entirety of his term in office. Bush’s economy was a boom in comparison to Hoover’s economy.
 
Apples and Oranges. This poll would be much closer if it were Carter vs. Bush (Carter had a worse environment to seek a second term in than Bush). Hoover vs. Bush??? Hoover had it MUCH worse.
 
Gotta agree the question sets up a slam dunk no brainer answer. I can say a lot about the trauma of the past half century in the USA but I would never dream of comparing anything--not the Cold War, not Vietnam, not Watergate, not even the worst of the post WWII economic depressions, and not 9/11 nor the War on Terror--to the depth and breadth of national trauma that was the Great Depression. Not even WWII came close I think to the sheer existential terror and potential for ripping apart the nation at the seams that the Depression embodied.

It is not a logical certainty that the President whose term was ripped up by this time bomb would automatically emerge as the most hated loser of his generation and wreck the fortunes of his political party for decades to come; by good fortune the nation might have elected some leadership, including a President, flexible and broad enough of mind to respond to the emergency in a helpful and inspiring way that earns the gratitude of the nation, especially given the Constitutionally mandated fixed election schedule that bought whoever took office in 1929 several years to find their footing and bearings. Nor does Hoover's shattered reputation follow from vast personal deficiencies; it is rather sad that some other Republican was not shattered, since the man had his virtues. Unfortunately far sight and flexibility and a comprehensive, inclusive national vision were not among them! A worse man might have done darker things, maybe set up a coup attempting to put democracy on hold. I cannot name a better man that OTL history had placed anywhere near plausible election in 1928--certainly not Al Smith, Hoover's first Democratic opponent!

Anyway, no President since Hoover has ever had to deal with a whammy on the scale of the Depression. God forbid any ever do, though an honest Future History attempt would have me attempting to prognosticate a few.
 
Bush Senior's re-election atmosphere was easier than Carter's in 1980, or Ford's in 1976 (if you count that), or Truman's in 1948, or Johnson's had he run in 1968. A bit tougher than his son in 2004 or Obama in 2012, but hardly impossible.

Hoover in 1932... you must be joking with this poll.
 
In 1992, Bush had a solid shot of reelection even if it didn’t pan out that way.

In 1932, the Dems could nominate a corpse and they’d still beat Hoover.
 
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