Herbert Hoover

by Glen Jeansonne

  The issue of whether Hoover should deliver a televised appeal for the GOP ticket was delicate. Hoover was reluctant to assert a role, fearing that Ike, like Dewey, might consider him a liability. Finally persuaded to call, the elder statesman was pleasantly surprised to learn that the Eisenhower campaign had been hoping he would volunteer. However, there was some difficulty raising the $50,000 necessary to pay for the broadcast. When Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen of Illinois learned of the problem, he personally provided the funds. On October 18, the aging ex-president delivered a stirring defense of Republican principles and policies to a national audience over CBS. He targeted younger voters who had never lived under a GOP administration. Within forty-eight hours, some thirty-five thousand viewers wrote to request copies of the speech.10

  Nonetheless, in 1952 the Democrats once again used Hoover as a scapegoat for the Depression. One circular, entitled “Change Back to What?,” featured photos of breadlines, Hoovervilles, men begging for jobs, and tramps trudging the highways in search of work. The propaganda piece read, “The Republicans said it was wrong for the Government to give relief to the hungry and the homeless.”11 In addition, the Democrats published a tabloid, distributed to 5 million potential voters, featuring a photograph showing then Major Eisenhower directing the ejection of the 1932 Bonus marchers from Washington under the byline “General Ike Helps Rout the Vets.” An accompanying article stated that he was using force against the ex-soldiers at the orders of President Herbert Hoover. The tabloid focused on the theme that the Republican Party had caused the Depression, then proceeded to make it worse by neglect, and that later the Democrats had restored prosperity.12 Meanwhile, large numbers of Republicans doubted Eisenhower’s fealty to the GOP. He had never before expressed interest in public office and had not taken clear positions on partisan issues. Initially, Hoover intended to vote for Eisenhower but otherwise remain uninvolved. Not until mid-October did he publicly endorse the Republican nominee. Whatever his doubts, Hoover did not want to see the Democrats’ grip on the White House continue. For his part, Ike adroitly courted the elderly ex-president and felt his support would be helpful in the West and in solidifying the GOP base.13 On November 6, 1952, Hoover enthusiastically watched via television as an avalanche of Republican votes buried the Democrats beneath an Eisenhower landslide. Hoover had waited for this moment since he had left the White House almost twenty years earlier. At the suggestion of Clare Boothe Luce, Eisenhower telephoned Hoover and told him he would try to bring as much integrity to the presidency as Hoover had brought to it. Hoover considered the election a referendum not only on politics, but on his core values. It had been a long, lonely road back. He realized it would not be possible to roll back the tide of big government completely, but at least in Eisenhower he had a fiscal conservative in the Executive Mansion. Although the two men did not agree on all issues, they established a relationship of mutual respect that endured. Also, Hoover was beginning to come to terms with the past and to renew his hope for the future. Eisenhower honored his aged predecessor by placing him at the front of his inaugural parade.14

  In the years since his presidency, Hoover had grown more conservative. It was difficult to recall, even for Hoover himself, that the conservative wing of the Republican Party had once evinced the same doubts about President Hoover’s GOP credentials that Hoover now felt about Eisenhower’s. Still, there were substantial similarities. Both had earned their reputations largely as administrators. Neither was a professional politician, and Eisenhower, like Hoover, had been cultivated by Democrats before formally declaring himself a Republican. Each had a reputation for a placid temperament but could be explosive, and each possessed more drive and ambition than was superficially evident. Ike, like Hoover, would be more conservative as ex-president than as president. If one word could sum up Hoover’s feelings, it would be “vindication,” even though he would have been happier with Taft or MacArthur in the White House. Nonetheless, Hoover’s lifelong ability to improvise did not fail him. The relationship was not warm initially, but it grew, as both men recognized in each other qualities they admired. The bond began with mutual respect and built on that foundation. More than a month after the election, on December 23, 1952, Eisenhower invited Hoover to lunch, at which they were joined by the incoming secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, and in January Hoover attended the new president’s inauguration. Hoover did not always agree with Eisenhower’s policies, but he made himself an ally, not an adversary. By December 1953 Hoover described his relations with the president to Hugh Gibson, writing that at first “there was coldness—and even some hostility. Gradually that has evaporated but I am not in any inner circle of influence.”15

  Eisenhower trusted Hoover’s political judgment and agreed with it more than Truman had. He respectfully listened to Hoover’s advice and sometimes solicited it, though he did not inevitably follow it. The chief executive kept his door open to the former president and also made social overtures to him. In May 1953, he invited his new friend to a stag dinner that included such Hoover friends as Lewis Strauss, Douglas MacArthur, and the conservative treasury secretary, George Humphrey. A few weeks later the president extended congratulations to Hoover on his seventy-ninth birthday, expressing gratitude that recent events had united them. Ike said he anticipated even closer relations in the future. One journalist wrote to Hoover that Eisenhower’s ascendancy to the White House represented “the splendid vindication by millions of American voters of those political principles which you consistently espoused and defend against attack, and worse, indifference.”16

  Hoover was disappointed with Eisenhower’s first defense budget, which called for a smaller air force than he had recommended, yet he did not publicly criticize the president. “I am still regarded by many of the public as a Republican leader,” he wrote a friend, explaining that if he opposed the administration it would “at once be heralded as a split in the Party.” Hoover was a consummate realist. He elaborated that Ike’s was “the only Republican administration we have or hope to reelect in our time.” Eisenhower continued to cultivate Hoover’s friendship, extending an invitation in August 1954 to join him on a fishing trip to Colorado. Hoover, who rarely declined an opportunity to fish, readily agreed. Ike said the only people at the camp would be Hoover, himself, and possibly the owner of the lodge—and the president would do all the cooking. The elder statesman found Ike a genial companion but not sufficiently serious about fishing and overpunctilious about cooking.17

  In 1953 the Republican Congress approved a bill sponsored by two GOP congressmen providing for a second government reorganization commission with broader powers than the previous commission Hoover had chaired under Truman. Hoover was appointed by Eisenhower to serve, and at the first meeting the commission elected him chair. It has become known as the Second Hoover Commission. Unlike the first commission, it contained a majority of Republicans and had no vice chairman. Hoover personally appointed every member of the numerous task forces that researched and reported on specific bottlenecks in the federal bureaucracy. Although the first commission had focused primarily on reorganization within individual agencies, its successor also explored, and attempted to eliminate, overlap among agencies. It was specifically authorized to probe and sever from the bureaucracy the government functions that competed with private enterprise. This provoked the wrath of Democrats, who feared Hoover might use the commission to dismantle functions of the New Deal, which was precisely his objective. He was eager to push such changes through Congress expeditiously, lest the Democrats regain control of that body in the 1954 off-year elections.

  As Hoover had feared, the 1954 congressional elections returned the Democrats to control of Congress. This proved a hurdle to implementation of the recommendations of the Second Hoover Commission. The senior public servant professed himself pleased with Eisenhower, Dulles, Defense Secretary Charles Wilson, Treasury Secretary George Humphrey, and Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson. The trouble, he believ
ed, came from other quarters outside the White House and the cabinet. After a brief goodwill trip to Germany, Hoover redoubled his efforts to crank out reams of recommendations from the Second Hoover Commission. The commission submitted 145 administrative recommendations that could be implemented by executive orders and an additional 167 that required legislation. The Democratic Congress proved a redoubtable obstacle to many of the proposed reforms, and, overall, the Second Hoover Commission ostensibly accomplished less than the first. However, Hoover reflected that even those not implemented might have educational value. Hoover always came in under budget. Democratic Senator John McClellan, chairman of the Committee on Government Operations, later reminisced that “at the expiration of both the Commissions [Hoover] headed, he returned to the Treasury of the United States a ‘surplus.’ That is, he got the job done without spending all the appropriations Congress gave him—a rarity, I regret to say, in Washington today.” McClellan added that this served to verify that Hoover lived “up to the principles of good government for which he so squarely stands.”18

  Hoover was pleased that “the administration, without admitting it, has adopted my proposals in the Great Debate—of course without any acknowledgement as to where they got it. Anyway, it is all to the good.” By mid-January 1954, Hoover believed that, as a whole, the “New Look” defense policy of the administration was close to what he had advocated. The New Look relied primarily on a large, nuclear-armed Strategic Air Command, expanding to bases around the globe. Gradually, the United States encircled the Soviet Union with air and naval bases, placing every major target within striking distance. Ground forces were now considered the auxiliary rather than the first line of defense. Moreover, America accelerated its submarine, aircraft carrier, and missile programs. Further, late in 1953 the still feisty ex-president signed a mammoth petition urging the United States to veto the admission of Communist China to the United Nations. In early 1954 a proposed constitutional amendment by Hoover’s friend Ohio senator John W. Bricker to outlaw executive agreements such as those negotiated by FDR from becoming effective without congressional ratification became a heated issue. Hoover favored the amendment but took no public stand on the measure, which was defeated. In May and June of 1954 the French found it difficult to repel attacks by Communist guerrillas in Vietnam. Hoover advised against sending American troops to aid the French, warning that it would prove a greater sinkhole of manpower than Korea. Moreover, in Vietnam the United States would be upholding imperialism, and the chances for success in the long term there were minuscule, given the determination of the Vietnamese nationalists to win independence. It would be a serious error to aid in the perpetuation of vestiges of the British and French empires, a practice that was already giving America “the stigma of colonial exploitation which we little deserve in view of our long history of sympathy with people striving to be free.”19

  Hoover certainly detested Communism, but his foreign policy strategy was forged more on practical than on ideological grounds. He pointed out that America must adopt a resurgence of nationalism in an aggressive postwar world, in which Americans were almost uniquely self-critical. Patriotism should become fashionable; the United States had little to be ashamed of. Idealism coupled with realistic self-interest must undergird U.S. policies in the Cold War. So far as the UN proved useful, the United States should utilize it, but the country should not overestimate its efficacy. It was primarily a debating society that furnished a forum for anti-American diatribes. It would not and could not protect America or small democracies confronted with Communist aggression. The United States should recognize and accept the fact that some nations had resorted to neutrality to protect themselves. America should be parsimonious with military and economic aid. It had already been proven that the United States could not buy reliable friends. Economic aid rarely improved living standards among the poor in the recipient nations, because it was skimmed off by the rich.20

  In November 1954 Hoover traveled to Germany at the invitation of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer to be honored for his contributions to Germany’s restoration as an industrial power with democratic institutions. Adenauer met Hoover at the airport in Bonn and lauded him “as one of the great men of the world who has placed himself in the service of humanity.” At dinner, the chancellor heaped more praise on the American for helping revive the German economy from postwar restrictions. Hoover replied by commending a healthy degree of German nationalism and said Germany must become the economic fulcrum of Western Europe. West German president Theodor Heuss told the aging humanitarian, “Your name is blessed by millions of nameless people.” Hoover departed with an optimistic farewell. “Today, under your wise statesmanship,” he informed Adenauer, “West Germany is about to attain her independence and to become a partner in the defense of freedom from the common danger.” Hoover briefed the president on his trip and Eisenhower said Hoover was the most qualified man he could have dispatched to undertake the healing of the vital nation in the heart of Europe.21

  The 1956 convention marked the centennial of the birth of the GOP. Hoover had planned a fishing trip, but Eisenhower asked the ex-president to deliver a brief speech. The thirty-first president used the commemoration to celebrate the party’s principles rather than deal in programmatic details. Safeguarding the vitality of free men and nations was the primary objective. He praised “the genius of our people, their devotion to personal liberty and their sustaining devotion to personal liberty and religious beliefs.” Although he rarely mentioned it, Hoover’s elder son, Herbert Jr., was making a contribution to statecraft by serving as the undersecretary of state under John Foster Dulles. Herbert Jr. helped untangle a diplomatic thicket that threatened to halt the flow of oil from Iran to the West. Meanwhile, early in 1953, Hoover’s longtime devoted friend Senator Taft, now the majority floor leader, was diagnosed with cancer. Despite his own advanced age, Hoover visited his stricken comrade at every opportunity. Loyalty to friends was a consistent, lifelong trait. When Taft died on the last day of July, Hoover issued a press release describing his remorse for the passing of the man he had known since their mutual work in food relief during the Great War. In February 1955, Hoover’s older brother, Tad, died. In old age the West Branch native, now a New Yorker, thrived on work and memories. Shortly after Tad’s death, Hoover’s boyhood home in Newberg, Oregon, was opened to the public.22

  When Hoover indicated that he did not plan to attend the 1956 GOP convention, Ike personally asked him to go and to deliver an address. “You exemplify in more ways than I am sure you realize the dignity and the spirit of the Republican Party,” the president wrote, “and I know that every delegate to the Convention would be keenly disappointed, as would I, if you were not there to lend your counsel and advice.” Hoover decided to make the trip and was gratified by the thunderous applause with which his speech was received. It was his sixth speech before the quadrennial gathering. He used the occasion to warn of the dangers of Communism. Afterward, the former president wrote Eisenhower to give thanks “for a President who has, amid stupendous difficulties, kept the world at peace and lifted American public life again to the levels of integrity.” In late October, Hoover was heartened by the Hungarian Revolution, then helped raise money for refugees after the anti-Communist uprising was suppressed by the Soviet Union. He mobilized some of his aging World War I assistants, who helped provide medicine and clothing for refugees and aided some to immigrate to America. Unlike the crises for which the earlier ARA had mobilized, in this one food was not a major need. By February 1957, most of the early immigrants had been settled and the government took over the program. Hoover devoted the remainder of the year to writing. Although Hoover and Ike were superficially congenial friends, Hoover did express reservations about Eisenhower’s aptitude for the presidency. He said the ex-general was decent and sincere in his desire to do the right thing, yet he had little knowledge about economics, politics, or the art of governing.23

  Hoover did not slow down, and he n
ever lost his zest for an active life. During his eighty-fifth year he traveled some fourteen thousand miles and delivered twenty speeches. He had long since outgrown his tendency as president to mumble in a nearly inaudible voice and had blossomed into a poignant, sometimes witty speaker. His speeches were sprinkled with original humor, epigrams, and aphorisms, and his writing now displayed this style as well. Moreover, Hoover had grown to enjoy public speaking and was in great demand, with far more invitations than he could accept. He still painstakingly wrote every speech himself and picked out of his rhetorical garden every gratuitous weed. Hoover was either on the road, fishing at his favorite haunts, or immersed in writing, wherever he went, but chiefly at the Waldorf Towers, surrounded by secretaries and interrupted by friends and dignitaries, whom he greeted cheerfully; then he returned to writing, which had become his passion in old age. As some men turned to drink, gambling, or women, Hoover turned to writing. It was his avocation and his vocation. He had once struggled; now he excelled. Hoover also continued to speak, to testify before congressional committees, and to perform ceremonial tasks at the government’s request. He was now fully acclimated to continent hopping by plane. In April 1958, shortly after Hoover’s gall bladder removal, Eisenhower called to ask if he would represent the United States for the celebration of July Fourth at the Brussels World’s Fair. By the end of April, the elderly statesman’s doctor gave his permission for the trip and Eisenhower provided a government plane. Belgium was the place where Hoover had leaped up on the world stage, and memories flooded back. The man who had fed Belgium twice within a generation was given a hero’s welcome. Hoover’s July Fourth speech was a rousing defense of American values and his country’s role in the world. He noted that his nation’s ideals included compassion and the sharing of its technological innovations. His was a generous nation, Hoover reminded his audience at the fair. “Never after victory did we ask for an acre of territory, except a few military bases to protect the free nations. We have never asked for reparations or economic privileges,” he continued. “On the contrary, we made gigantic gifts and loans to aid nations in war and reconstruction, including Communist Russia.” On July 5, which was declared “Hoover Day,” he spoke about the achievements of the CRB during the First World War. The New York Times wrote that it had been an excellent idea to send Hoover to represent America and that “once more Mr. Hoover has been an honor to his country.”24