Abstract
The range of historical perspectives on Herbert Hoover’s political philosophy is remarkably wide. On the one hand, some see Hoover as a Progressive who promoted growth and activism in the federal government, ultimately laying the foundation for much of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.1 On the other hand is the more commonly held understanding of Hoover as a market-oriented businessman whose laissez-faire policies mired the country in a lengthy depression.2 One of his biographers, Gary Dean Best, said he was “widely regarded as a liberal in what was predominantly a conservative party,”3 and David Kennedy, in his history of the period, points out that “Hoover was no mossback conservative in the Harding-Coolidge mold.”4 At one time, Hoover thought of himself as “an independent progressive in the Republican tradition.”5 He was, by all accounts, sufficiently unusual as a politician and complicated as a man that categorizing him was not easy.6
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
See for example, Steven Horwitz, “Herbert Hoover—Father of the New Deal” (Washington, DC: CATO Institute Briefing Papers, No. 122, September 29, 2012).
Gary Dean Best, Herbert Hoover: The Postpresidential Years 1933–1964, vol. 1 (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, Publication 274, 1983), xv.
David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 11.
Margaret Hoover, American Individualism: How a New Generation Can Save the Republican Party (New York: Random House, 2011), 21. See also, George H. Nash, Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover’s Secret History of the Second World War and Its Aftermath (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2011), xvii–xviii.
Glen Jeansonne, The Real Herbert Hoover, Historically Speaking (Boston: The Historical Society, Boston University: 2011), 28.
David D. Lee, “The Politics of Less: The Trials of Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 13, no. 2 (Spring 1983), 305. See also Jerome L. Himmelstein, To the Right—The Transformation of American Conservatism (Berkeley: University of California Press 1990), 6, 17.
See for example, George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 (Wilmington, DE: ISI, 1996).
William E. Leuchtenburg, Herbert Hoover (New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC: 2009), 61.
Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Cabinet and the Presidency, 1920–1933 (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1952), 62–63.
Ibid., 142.
Ibid., 103.
David Burner, Herbert Hoover: A Public Life (New York: Random House, 1979), 174.
Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), 98.
Ibid.
Robert Sobel, Coolidge: An American Enigma (Washington, DC: Regnery Pub., 1998), 242.
Gordon Lloyd, ed., The Two Faces of Liberalism: How the Hoover-Roosevelt Debate Shapes the 21st Century (Salem, MA: M&M Scrivener Press, 2006), 39.
See a book review by Jonathan Chait, “Herbert Hoover, Still Not a Liberal,” The New Republic, March 31, 2009, http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-plank/ herbert-hoover-still-not-liberal. See also Leuchtenberg, Herbert Hoover on the inadequacy of Hoover’s voluntary approach to crisis, 25, 31, 133.
Amity Shlaes, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression (New York: HarperCollins Publishers 2007).
See, for example, Michael A. Bernstein, The Great Depression (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 207, and Herbert Stein, The Fiscal Revolution in America (Washington, DC: AEI Press, 1990), 170.
Herbert Hoover, American Individualism (New York: Doubleday-Page Publishers, 1922), 3.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 482–83.
Ibid., 500–503.
Ellis Hawley, ed. “Essay,” in Herbert Hoover—As Secretary of Commerce (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1974), 47, 55.
Brant Short, “Measures of the Presidents: Hoover to Bush,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 21, no. 2 (Spring 1991): 337.
Herbert Hoover, Addresses upon the American Road, 1933–1938 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1938), 216.
Ibid., 219.
Ibid., 220.
Ibid., 387.
Herbert Hoover, The Challenge to Liberty (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1934), 1.
Ibid., 3.
Ibid., 6.
Ibid., 7.
Ibid., 51.
Ibid., 53.
Ibid.
Ibid., 54.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Great Depression, 1929–1941 (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1952), 329.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and Sean Wilentz, Herbert Hoover—The American Presidents (New York: Times Books, Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 2009), 489.
Woodrow Wilson, “The Study of Administration,” Political Science Quarterly 2, no. 2 (June 1887): 197–222.
Lloyd, The Two Faces of Liberalism, 411.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2013 Joseph Postell and Johnathan O’Neill
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lloyd, G., Davenport, D. (2013). The Two Phases of Herbert Hoover’s Constitutional Conservatism. In: Postell, J., O’Neill, J. (eds) Toward an American Conservatism. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137300966_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137300966_10
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-45332-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-30096-6
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)