When we got there. Of what we wanted to do under the new deal had already been anticipated by. Hoover and the previous administration numbers of thought went further he was still more aggressive been reversed but you don't get from the austerity of the Coolidge era and the new deal or the bridge of Herbert Hoover's conversation on one of the most maligned presidents of the 20th century Herbert Hoover will speak to Kenneth why he has just written a biography called Hoover an extraordinary life and extraordinary times became one of the major opponents of the New Deal and one of the few Republicans at the time capable of those articulating grounds for opposition to the new CIO and that became. Like minded Republican leaders of the free gifts of modern American conservatism a conversation on heard over was can this White next aletter some politics. But 1st the news for Pacifica Radio I'm Eileen Alpha dairy a divided state commission in Nebraska has approved construction of the Keystone x.l. Pipeline across the state the vote by the Nebraska Public Service Commission was treated to a came after last week's revelation that 210000 gallons spilled from an existing section of the Keystone pipeline in South Dakota Nebraska regulators were not allowed to consider that spill as they deliberated today's vote was the last major regulatory hurdle for Keystone x.l. It was approved earlier this year by Donald Trump and a reversal of the Obama administration's rejection 2 years ago the route of bruised by Nebraska regulators is not precisely the one proposed by pipeline owner Trans Canada one of the dissenting commission. There said many of the land owners along the new route were not given notice and the chance to weigh in opponents have promised to challenge the pipeline in court chairman Larry Wright of the punkah tribe called the decision approving Keystone x.l. Disappointing and said Indian rights were trampled on in the process when the treaty alliance the tribes that runs from Canada. 150 different tribal nations all together consider Farkas to storm and what it means for water for land for future generations our resources and all those natives and non-natives impacted by this and over all we're not happy about this you heard today that one of the commissioners stated that our tribe here in a vast was not consulted on this issue properly and how we were treated. Trance Canada has said it won't decide until next month if the $8000000000.00 project remains financially feasible a 2nd woman charges Minnesota Senator Al Franken touched her and appropriately Lindsay man's told c.n.n. Franken placed his hand on her rear as they posed for a photo at the Minnesota State Fair in 2012 years and to Frank and 1st term men said Franken quote hold me and really close like awkward close and as my husband took the picture he put his hand full fledged on my rear it was wrapped tightly around my butt cheek she said the 33 year old man's told c.n.n. The interaction made her feel gross She says she immediately told her husband that Franken had grabbed her bottom she posted on her Facebook page afterwards quote dude Al Franken totally molested me creeper Franken told c.n.n. He didn't remember taking the photo with men's but that he feels badly she felt disrespected last week Los Angeles broadcaster Leeann Tweeden accuse Franken of forcibly kissing her during a u.s.o. Tour in 2006 then having a photograph taken with his hands over her breast as she slept on a military transport plane licorice been says she was absolutely not paid to speak publicly about her sexual molestation charge against Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore course then was the 1st woman publicly to accuse Moore of sexual misconduct course men said he brought her to his home when she was just 14 years old removed her closing to her bra and underwear and touched her and guided her to touch him over his underwear before she asked him to return her home course meant told n.b.c. She'd wanted to confront more earlier but decided against it after discussing with her children what the consequences might be of such a revelation. I actually sat down to my children who were in junior high in elementary school. And tell them you know I oversee and. The ability to make the decision they were afraid that. Would solve their social connections that they would be castigated in their proofs if you had to tell your kids to take about what it has. And we decided together that we wouldn't do it at the time. When you know. That Washington Post sought me out I didn't go looking for a spell in my life it literally fell in my lap one other woman has accused more of sexually assaulting her when she was 16 more has denied the charges others have said he pursued them when they were teenagers and he was a prosecutor in his thirty's Zimbabwe ruling party officials says it should take parliament 2 days to impeach longtime president Robert Mugabe who's resisting calls to step down a party leader said Santo p.f. Will move a motion for impeachment tomorrow set up a committee and on Wednesday will report back in quote we vote him out the party leader says the main charge against the 93 year old is allowing his wife to usurp government powers and that he is quote too old and cannot even walk without help I lean out and bury letters and politics is next good day and welcome to letters in politics I miss shows a rich tyranny and conversation about former President Herbert Hoover and his life Herbert Hoover was president between 19291933 he's been much maligned as perhaps the worst president of the 20th century being accused of being ineffective during the on the oncoming Great Depression in 1029 but I guess we have today as a little bit of a different view about Herbert Hoover and enter in an expression a big picture and looking at his life because of course Herbert Hoover was also a humanitarian and also an influential figure expression before modern conservatism Joining me to talk about all. This is Kenneth White Kenneth White is the author of a new biography it's called Hoover an extraordinary life and extraordinary times and it's why does my very good pleasure to welcome you to the program pleasure to be here Mitch again I said there that he's been much maligned in history especially you know consider I remember during the George Bush years I hear people say George Bush is worse than Hoover and that that was really really bad even. Vice President Cheney was heard to warn the Republican Party that if it didn't get through the Great Recession. You know in some sort of effective way it was going to be known as the party of Herbert Hoover forever so. The legacy is quite strong in that respect do you do you think do you think it is legacies unfair Oh yeah. You know the Great Depression was a global advantage was a long time in the making it was actually a byproduct. Of the great war. Nobody at the time knew what was happening one of the amusing things that. I am covered in the course of researching the book was also a commentary by economists at the time who. Generally speaking were supportive of Hoover but when they got together themselves and tried to figure out what was going on in the economy they didn't have a clue they got there was a big meeting of a con a mist a global meeting of a condom a spin in Europe in 1931 just one. Depression was becoming known as a Great Depression and they had future Nobel Prize winners there they had the leading economy kind of missed from about 15 different nations. And they sat around talking in Geneva about what what was happening to the economy and over the course of several days of discussion. They came up with a list of possible causes of the depression that ran to about a dozen pages they couldn't agree on the role of fiscal policy and the role of monetary policy they couldn't both you know agree on whether it had started in the u.s. And spread or started elsewhere and spread to the u.s. They couldn't agree on whether to break for lunch at noon every day as the Nordic nations wanted or whether to take a 3 hour break as as the Latin nations why. They couldn't agree on anything and Hoover was more or less alone against this phenomenon he fought valiantly against it his. Efforts to. Combat ing it involved a lot of what were for the time considered to be really brave and innovative policy measures but of course it was a far bigger problem than could have been handled by what was at the time a fairly small federal government in the u.s. With very limited knowledge about what was happening and also in the 1st offensive you know there's fairly strong agreement that Roosevelt didn't do much better in his years in office and you know it was the 2nd world war which was then he respects an outcome of the Great Depression and the 1st World War that finally turned things around in a c.n.n. Poll debate in itself yeah I mean yeah he lead a whole show on on what we you know the effectiveness of the New Deal which of course you know many economists also like having. But I don't want to get too caught up on that I do want to ask you though he and even the previous administration the Coolidge ministration he was secretary of commerce of star recall correctly and so he you know he understands commerce in a sense business you know sense finance he knew I think you write this in your book he knew something was coming and he may not have known it was the Great Depression but he knew something was coming and then he sell off his investments. In what it would have been about April 929 just after he'd been sworn in as president and about 4 months before the market crashed he centrally put all of this assets in cash because he had no confidence that the market was going to hold up and he'd been warning actually since the mid 1920 s. That the government was being too loose in its monetary policy that money was. To keep that people were using it to speculate in real estate and speculate in the stock market and he was one of very few Americans who didn't enjoy the roaring twenty's because he was so concerned about what might happen next. Anyone ever accused him of insider trading hours or so far apart from when he did that and 29 Well insider trading wasn't illegal at the time strictly speaking it was run health Eckel and. Hoover was always careful during his career as a businessman he was a mining engineer who operated at a global scale of it in his twenty's and thirty's. And he was always careful to. Tell people that he didn't believe that you should speculate in the stock market and he. Was quite. Dismissive of people who traded on insider information but like so many. Tycoons of the time he made full of. An image of his. Privileged knowledge of what was happening in his own companies and in the economy at large and frequently traded on the basis of insider information for that interesting little of it after the greater part was after the stock market crash in 29 that insider trading became here who was part of a. Long run of banking reforms that started at the end of Hoover's watch and continued through the through the New Deal was interesting the end of Hoover's watch and the beginning of the New Deal and I've heard this before about Herbert Hoover that some of the that some of the things that would be turned into the new deal actually began under Herbert Hoover he had this line I want to quote from your book by his retirement and despite essential pragmatism he had reasonable claims to paternity of 2 main ideological currents of the American century New Deal liberalism and the modern conservative movement born in opposition to it. That's a big statement Well you mentioned Calvin Coolidge before anybody recognizes and everybody agrees that Coolidge was an advocate of small government the government in fact couldn't be quite small enough for Calvin Coolidge and Hoover came in and night team 28 to 928 election and saw. Based on assists experience in the 1st World War What were you helping Woodrow Wilson managed a national wartime economy he saw a positive role for government and enhanced sing the standard of living for Americans of all classes and he thought that the government could encourage better health care better education. He said the government could encourage better distribution of income. To different income classes and he wanted to bring this mindset to his presidency and show people that government could be a positive force and when the depression started he was actually quite aggressive in using the government to combat what. It was at the time and you know seriously declining economy and he invested in. Public works projects and job creation projects and he had you know agricultural supports among other measures that were as I said quite innovative at the time and put the government far deeper into the economy than it had ever been before so when the new dealers came to office in 1933. As as Rex Tugwell one of the New Deal intellectuals said you know we found when we got there that much of what we wanted to do under the new deal had already been anticipated by Herbert Hoover and the previous administration never was about went further he was still more aggressive than Hoover but you don't get from the austerities of the Coolidge era to the New Deal was out the bridge of Herbert Hoover so he has a very legitimate claim to being a father of the New Deal not as important to it as Roosevelt but Roosevelt isn't Roosevelt without food for 1st and then while he's watching Roosevelt in the 1930 s. Through through his 1st term in to his 2nd term Hoover is quite dismayed with just how far Roosevelt pushing with his his interventions in the economy going so far as wage and price controls and putting millions of Americans on government payrolls and. And. Launching dozens of new federal agencies and Hoover site that this was so far beyond what. Had been invasion by the founders and what America was used to in his in its experience of the national government that Roosevelt. Was on a radical path and that he needed to be pulled back so Hoover became one of the major opponents of the New Deal and one of the few Republicans at the time who was capable of despite his pragmatism of articulating. Practical yet. Intellectually sound. Grounds for opposition to the New Deal and that became with the help of. Like minded Republican senators at the time the basis of modern American conservatism all of the arguments we see through the Eisenhower years and right up to Reagan you can trace back to this activity by Hoover and his friends in starting in about 1970 a will a significant amount of $937.00. What's significant about it. You say this is when this begins its head on December 16th 1937 to be exact he made a speech in Chicago to. Meeting of business people at which he laid out his vision for a conservative America in which he put. Individual freedom and individual enterprise as a. Drivers of. Americans of American success of the American economy to Americans. Handed a full living the. Virtues individual freedom and enterprise work to Hoover's mind what produced everything that was great about America and he laid this all out on a speech in that day on the very same day his friends in the Democratic area in the Republican Senate wrote a piece in The New York Times that articulated a very similar agenda they had in fact been collaborating in previous years and again that that. Approach of emphasizing individual freedom individual and price trusting the private sector to grow the economy trusting individuals to decide what they wanted out of American culture in America and American society rather than dictating to them from the government was essentially it was the central core of conservatism at that moment and. From from there forward this is interesting to me because at least in modern history you don't see often maybe it's changing now a little to elicit from Presidency but usually up to this point you didn't see living past presidents or previous presidents criticizing the existing president No And I think one of the reasons you saw Hoover do it was he felt he had unfinished business he won one term he said he had when he came into office in 1982 laid out an agenda that was going to take a full 2 terms to complete and because of the Great Depression and all of the time and energy it took he didn't get anywhere near. Through his even his 1st term agenda so Hoover didn't want to. Up on politics and didn't want to give up on the presidency so he made himself available again in 193-6940 he didn't have a chance in either occasion by he tried quietly to organize on his own behalf and he tried to raise money on his own behalf he went around making speeches to try to raise his profile and to whip up some enthusiasm for his candidacy but he was never successful at it he was successful as a critic and he was influential with the Republicans who did win. Nominations and in the series and forty's of course nobody could compete politically with Franklin Roosevelt in those years I did f.d.r. Ever fire back at him over regionally active Roosevelt not only ran against Hoover and won in 1932 but pretty much every subsequent election that Roosevelt ran when he just keep bringing up. Over time didn't matter you know who was nominated by the Republicans s.t.r. Was happy to run against whomever and he kept reminding people back of the dark days in 1982 when Herbert Hoover was president and he did a tremendous job of demonizing Hoover and that's one of the reasons why you mentioned at the outset that we have this impression of Hoover as being this enormous failure and that that is. Part of a very deliberate and very successful. And narrative that Franklin Roosevelt laid out during the whole of his presidency and even when he was gone Harry Truman who was very friendly to Hoover and brought Hoover back to public life and gave him. Some pretty significant work to do on behalf of the. The federal government even Harry Truman when he went out to fight his 1st election used the old Roosevelt tactic of running against Hoover no matter who the Republicans put against him did f.d.r. And Hoover ever. Get back together to have them and make up for our Did this just. Literally die much later after. That they hate each other for the rest of their lives and Hoover on the very day that Roosevelt tied it written a letter to somebody else and posted it in the morning saying that he hoped that Franklin Roosevelt lived long enough to see. What a mess he had made of America and all his chickens would come home to roost in that very afternoon Roosevelt Christie Hoover opposed the United States' involvement in World War 2 It was very nice. And well you know if you remember in those years 39 to 41 Hoover was hardly alone in fact I think the Congress passed 5 separate. Pieces of legislation insisting on America. America's noninvolvement in the conflict and it was only after Pearl Harbor that sentiment changed in at that point Hoover. Felt he had no choice to but to. Go with the flow so he didn't change his mind he still opposed. American entry into the war in Europe. But he kept his fire. Through the Warriors we're in conversation with white he is the author of the book Hoover and extraordinary life in extraordinary times and can't wait I know one of the big reasons you wrote. This book was to train Hoover beyond this period of the Great Depression and we'll do that colorful questions about this period and actually maybe why did he oppose World War 2. Hoover lived through World War One and. Stablished himself as. An international humanitarian world war one he saved about 10000000 lives in a conflict that killed about 10000000 people he saw more of that war than pretty much anyone else in America and he didn't want another one it was a simple as that he thought that. It had been bad for the us both in terms of lives lost but also in terms of. America's place in the world to you know America came out of Versailles. In a mood of isolation unlike anything it had felt before and really turned its back on the world for quite a long time Hoover side that if America went into another war the 2nd World War that it would cease to be the country that it had been through all of its history that the federal government would become enormous that the military would become enormous and you know that was true yeah very much so and then we got out of the 2nd World War the military industrial complex and Hoover side he also saw that it would change people's relationships with the state that a lot of the freedom and. A lot of the. I guess the. The sense of America as. Being an open field where an individual could set out and achieve whatever he wanted and do whatever he wanted that had been. So important to Hoover in his life he thought that that attitude would be. Very hard to sustain in a world with a. Much larger government presence and with many more responsibilities for the security of the world and he was right Herbert Hoover parents were both Quakers they both died while he was quite young he was orphaned by the age of 10 did but but was he a Quaker all his life and do you think that played a role in his opposition to World War 2 as a very good question and a bit complicated Hoover's parents were Quakers and mother was a Quaker minister. And in fact almost a full maternal line with Quaker Pistor so. By the time he was 9 the movers parents died and after that he was sent around to live. Both in Iowa where it was born and later in Oregon where he had distant relations. To live with uncles aunts and so on he never really fit in with any of these families the people who saw him in Oregon remembered him as being a lonely kid. Wearing tattered clothes hands dirty always hungry they felt story form and Hoover himself recognised his condition as an adolescent and felt that his life it taking quite a turn for the worse so when he got out into the world of his own on his own he. Really dropped most of the. Quaker tenet that he'd been raised with and he had also studied. At Stanford University got a geology degree considered himself a man of science unlike a lot of scientifically trained individuals and that era had come to. Sink that you know all that he'd read in the Bible was not necessarily so and so he lived a secular life through most of his States but. There are certain Quaker ethics that did stick with them a sense of responsibility to community a sense of. One's place in a community and the need to serve the community and also I think. He did have an aversion to war he thought that was wasteful of life and resources and that. Government should do everything it could to avoid it so it will mean ever attributed his opposition to the war to his Quaker upbringing and while he accepts you know. In his presidency when he had to. Do the sort of ritualistic attendance at worship that. Chief executives are expected to do he really didn't have any contact with the Quaker community but it would I think be rash to say that it didn't his Quaker at brain didn't influence this attitudes towards war you mentioned he got his degree in geology from Stanford University he would make his fortune through mining Yes he did yes. He was trained as a geologist any. I was employed as a mining engineer in his early twenty's he went straight up and discovered one of the biggest gold mines in the Australian outback he went to China and pulled off one of the biggest mining deals in the history of that. Country he had quite a successful career as a miner He's often referred to as we do have a tendency to to. Present presidential figures in their best lighten It's often said that Hoover in his business career was some sort of for a shoe Alger story you know the young man by virtue of his character and heard work succeeds in the world and so on and you know no question Hoover worked hard but. He was a very ruthless businessman he would more of the Robber Barons went to the Horatio Alger types and. When he was in Australia when an invite to his Stanford friends. To come and work with them and several of them did and Hoover would write letters about their experience. To his Brother Theodore back in the us all this was going on and can I can I quote you from your flesh so he writes Theodore about this guy Wilson who they both knew and who had come to Australia to work for free but Hoover. Said it's Wilson's job to get the shaft down quicker and cheaper than any fast on the field and he will and in doing so he'll make not only his reputation but my own is managing engineer he must do it if he fails I'll arrive back in San Francisco so broken he will know where to eat I've told all my California man this man hate me more when they work for me than before they're coming to a perfect ale here and I am that. That will. Be So that's that's here because we're in business and that's how Herbert Hoover in business treated his France do you ever use a gun. Well that's the next chapter in China so yes after he has even Australia he goes to China and I won't go into all the details so it's a quite a long and vacillating story but yes at one point there are very credible reports of him waving a test still around in order to close the deal on the terms that he wanted. To do that work Hell yeah yeah yeah but it worked for a time he got the deal they the company that he was representing in the United Kingdom by. The largest coal mines in China. But the deal was one so one sided and was. Really forced upon. Chinese officials perhaps. Under duress and. Chinese government as a result sued. Over company in. London court and won and the judge was quite harsh in his descriptions of. Hoover stealing food and his treatment of the Chinese in order to deal. To be undone he oversaw a lot of time in China Zachariah act for about 3 years he was there during the Boxer Rebellion He speaks Chinese you know he was there with his wife Lou Henry Hoover who did learn the language and Hoover I think. Had maybe a 100 words or so but he never really studied the language let's get into talking about Hoover and his humanitarian work and particularly before he was. President. The 1st time was with Germany in World War One and getting people in Germany food that they were in desperate need of in a 2nd time was in 1921 in Russia and this is obviously after the the Russian Revolution I find the humanitarian work interesting and also instructive in understanding maybe even conservatives used towards humanitarianism or talk about Hoover before Hoover believed of course he's doing this through the government so I don't want to ignore that point but I thought I saw a thread here developing where Hoover believed him volunteerism and it's it's not that Republicans don't believe in and humanitarian efforts but they always seek it is more of people should volunteer to do these things rather than the government. Those very true. Hoover he believed in and in fact most police people at the time believed that it was. An individual's responsibility to take care of his neighbor and that it was a community's responsibility to take care of its less fortunate and. That's why there were so many community organizations at the time from. Service clubs to. Chambers of Commerce to. Community chests all of them designed to help communities help themselves it was seen as a sign of. Weakness and moral infirmity to not be doing what you could to look after people in your neighborhood and I should add about this because we talked about the. Great Depression and Hoover's attitudes towards the Great Depression even in those years most Americans believed that it was a local responsibility a community responsibility to take care of the victims of depression there were pulled. And in 1982 that showed over 80 percent of Democrats and over 90 percent of Republicans believe that it was not the job of the federal government to give direct federal aid to victims of the depression the New York Times had a story in 1931. It asked $24.00 mayors across the country whether they wanted federal aid to look after victims of the Depression and the mares were frankly outraged at the suggestion they thought that the federal government was telling them that they were incompetent to look after people in their communities and that. And they suspected the federal government trying to overstep its jurisdiction and poke its nose into something that they were responsible for so there's a very strong Assoc all across America. Community Organization and community help and is so full of faith and volunteerism was it was widely shared at the time and his approach to humanitarianism starting with the the relief of Belgian in Belgium in the 1st world war of course Belgium had been overrun by the Germans and because of a British blockade off its coast it was no longer able to import food in just weeks into that conflict the population was in very serious danger of starvation so Hoover organized a Belgian relief effort that brought food and in the form of grains and meats from all around the world through the British proc aid through the German lines to the Belgian people and he did it largely was an organization of volunteers now while the organization was falling tears a lot of the money did come from governments like if you can't feed. 8000000 people on you know for period of almost 5 years. And here contributions. Hoover chose to emphasize the voluntary nature of his efforts for rather than the fact that the money or much of the money came from government because he firmly believed in this ethic of self-help and individual responsibility not just for oneself but for one's community in as something again considering Hoover the father of modern you know this if you want to call Hoover if I don't know if others the correct term but you know a father a father of a modern conservatism I mean that that's how conservatives today see humanitarian efforts. Yes though I think that you know as a practical matter when something happens. Like Hurricane Katrina everybody sees now a role for the federal government and say disaster relief and. I don't I don't know that you would get even many Republicans even from Republicans saying that the government should simply sit on its hands. And I'm sure in Puerto Rico. But I mean are disaster but maybe just how you know aid for you know homeless people people are struggling stuff like that I mean yes. I think still I you know have basic level of welfare spending is is generally acceptable to most members of most parties but you're right there they are there are some on. The right to our lesson to see asked about that and Republicans on the whole. Would be more inclined to say. Community Response is an individual responsibility it's important perhaps Democrats here in conversation with Kenneth White Teeth is the author of a biography on Herbert Hoover it's called Hoover an extraordinary life and extraordinary times Kenneth White I want to talk to you a little bit about. Ermac Hoover's 1928 presidential run and and how it pertains to race in the United States I've seen it said that Herbert Hoover was part of you know we call Richard Nixon a southern strategy that Nixon used and 68 to get white voters in the south but that Herbert Hoover had his own or was part of this times Southern strategy. W.e.b. Dubois called Herbert Hoover as undemocratic racist and which this was a beginning of a time where you saw all black voters in the south begin to be disaffected with the Republican Party. You know a complicated receiver because you have to remember going into 928 he was a hero in the south been the man during the 1927 Mississippi Flood who had relieved most a 1000000 people who'd been dislocated by. Floodwaters over I think 17 states most of them southern states and he had quite successfully. Built. Relief camps for them got them food and water and and. Relieved what was a very dire situation so he was very popular. And even in that I went into the election with even had though I heard that I least read and in looking into this that. Aid in to Mrs in the Mississippi flood it did not necessarily get the black Americans the way to the white America. Surprise and this is an era if there were incidents. For instance there were reports. Of. White soldiers and. White community leaders keeping blacks working on repairing the levees at gunpoint during the floods and I think there were instances of segregation in some of the. Relief camps that were set up and some supplies. More to sections of the relief camps there and. Then and then the black sections Hoover can be blamed for not being entirely cognizant of what was going on the notion though that. By. Managing the relief during the floods he could upset. Many decades of. Very firm attitudes. To it to the black community. Is simply unrealistic his attitudes were generally enlightened but I think it's fair to say he didn't do enough for. Black people during the release and as a candidate in the south. He simply didn't care where his folks came from he just wanted the votes and so in some. Parts of the South he aligned himself. With. Parts of the Republican Party. That were fairly well integrated in other parts of the South he aligned himself with the so-called lily white Republicans and he took the votes where he could get them which was. Did you participate though in the campaign against Al Smith Yes he did. That was an issue though about the follow system not about race it was Al Smith though not seen as somebody to be more favorable towards blacks not necessarily now well tell me about Al Smith did quite poorly. In the south for complicated reasons one was the fact that he was Catholic The other was very he was in favor of prohibition when a lot of people warranted. In favor in the south. But also because he was. You know he was a Democrat and the Democrats generally. In those years were seen to be antipathetic to too many blacks. You write about Al Smith Well tell me about the story between Hoover and how Smith. Al Smith was a former New York governor. Very effective politician in his way which was a man of the people in New York state his persona and his strange new york accent didn't carry very well across the u.s. And neither did the fact that he was. Full of prohibition and he was Catholic and America hadn't had a Catholic. Nominee in either party for for president that point in time and there was still quite a huge amount of anti-Catholic prejudice across the country there were. Talk about the dozens of publications that existed primarily just to foment Afy anti-Catholic sentiments at the time and. It did become. An election in tearing the campaign they were 1st whisper campaigns against Smith because of his Catholicism and then he came out and. Addressed it directly Hoover himself said as a man of conscience in a Quaker a person whose own. Religion had been in different times in different places frowned upon by the establishment he believed in religious liberty and didn't think anybody should hold on Smith or religion against him. He said it very clearly at the start of the campaign but when the whispers kept coming Smyth's got frustrated and blamed Hoover and Hoover's campaign for fomenting them and of course there was an incident where one member of a Democratic committee I think it was in Virginia was. Caught distributing anti-Catholic literature. And who very disapproved of didn't fire the person. And so there has long been in the Al Smith camp a sense of Hoover. Didn't do enough to defend Smith from accusations of being un-American because he was Catholic. I think Hoover could have done more to defend Smith but you have to remember at the same time that. Smith was using his Catholicism and using the anti catholic. Phonons he had as as an issue as a tool in the race he was raising money on. That basis and so for Hoover to make policy as I'm an issue in the campaign would have been. Early off script for him and would have been to conduct the campaign on on Smith's terms and on Smith's issues which. The Republicans were loath to do at the time they had Democratic prosperity or for a Republican prosperity to to run on as their issue and they wanted to talk about the economy they didn't want to talk about. Religion So you know it was messy like a lot of campaigns Hoover like a lot of politicians. Was more interested in and winning in the Electoral College than winning in heaven and. Smith. Was beaten handily in 1980 still it whenever we do a show like this on a historic American figure essentially a powerful one during the 20th century or even even really any time I do try to do a little bit of research about their reputation when it when it comes to race and I did do that on Hoover last night preparing for our conversation and I'm no scholar and you know we do one of these shows every day so I can only get so deep into it and you know they can't cross check everything so well the number of pages just doing a search on it online came up talking about who were participating and what they called a southern strategy back in 1980 do you think that claims unfair you know I don't know if I said you know he would he would take votes for everybody they came from and I don't think you can call it. The southern strategy is a bit of a loaded term. These days given subsequent political events but he did have a southern strategy in his day and that strategy was to take votes wherever he could get them and if that meant aligning himself with the lily white Republicans he was happy to do so. Well is he a good politician you know the. Well politics is obviously different question Is he a good person you know terrible politician he didn't believe in politics really he was you know trained at the scientist and he believed that he needed information you needed facts you needed to analyze them and then you needed to find the optimal road to a solution and you know he an optimal road to a solution is rarely the political road which involves. He knew a lot of backslapping in a lot of handshaking and a lot of deal making a lot of compromising in order to bring people together into something they can all agree on not necessarily the optimal outcome. So he had a problem intellectually with politics and secondly he wasn't very good at it he he was. He was a bit shy and diffident as an individual he didn't like he didn't ever felt comfortable. With crowds and he never. Felt entirely comfortable with strangers so putting himself out there marketing themselves marketing as ideas making a case for himself was a very hard thing for Hoover to do. You compare him with somebody like Roosevelt to whom all of those things the art of compromise and the art of political communication were 2nd nature he was brilliant at both. There was not much of a contest between the 2 of them when they meant 32 How devastating do you think it was to his reputation and what happened with the Bonus Army and 1932 just before he kills off his early spring the campaign I guess you know at the Bonus Army it's one of the great mass of the Great Depression and it was a surprise to me because I'd heard about it. Read about it many times over the years but when I got. Right back into the raw. Occurred I found that the really the Bonus Army was not an issue if at all in 1932 and when you think about it a bad it makes sense so you had all of these veterans of the great war come to Washington in 1932 asking the government to give them a portion of the pensions they were owed in the 1940 s. To pay at the front so that. They'd have some relief from the Depression and the government didn't want to do this. And they Congress decided not to do this in the summer of 1932 and at that time most people thought. They had the Bonus Army as it was called it just pack up and go home and some of them did battle some of the more radical one stayed around Washington and formed a really Jack Yeah it was a tent city and they also squatting a lot of buildings and so on and they increasingly made official Washington feel uneasy and. Then the local government decided that it wanted to clear. These people out of some buildings in. In around the Capitol so. Phantom the army under General Douglas MacArthur MacArthur pushed the people back. Out of the capital to Anacostia flats where they had been camping in their tent city and then torched all of their tents and. That the mythology. That's come out of it. And again it's mostly from New Deal partisans like. Rex Tugwell and Felix Frankfurter Frankfurter they said in their memoirs many years later that Roosevelt when he saw in the newspaper reports of Hoover. Using tanks to clear. 4 straggling veterans out of the nation's capitol. Roosevelt said that well that set that wins the election for me American people won't stand for that and again that's from frankfurter and from Tugwell in memoirs written in the fifty's and sixty's I went back and looked day by day through the coverage of the Bonus Army at the time and as a matter of fact. The New York Times The Washington Post. Pretty much every newspaper in the country was fully supportive of Hoover's efforts to clear what were seen as a dangerous mob front from the Capitol the. New York Times looked at 2 dozen editorial pages from around the country and found them unanimously behind Hoover's actions and that they literally digest another widely circulated publication at the time did its own survey of editorial opinion found exactly the same thing and make sense because. In those 1st role of the chief executive has to maintain law and order and people were genuinely uneasy about the presence of these Drifters and radicals in d.c. And Hoover's efforts to clear them out was applauded Roosevelt. Himself never made an issue of the Bonus Army during the campaign he never a step and by the end of the campaign when the New York Times to the summary of issues and 920 Erin is a $132.00 race it didn't raise the bonus our army either so. It was only in. Memory of the. New Deal. For so many many years after the fact that the Bonus Army was seen to be the issue. To be a significant issue in the campaign it simply wasn't and that was the that's the missed where you're saying is that there was a big issue in the campaign and it really came out this started to come out in some of our serious question jurors history of. The New Deal years and. Fifty's and it was later picked up by. Quo frankfurter and others in its white Thank you so much my pleasure thanks for having me on I think in its white has been our guest he is the author of a new biography on Herbert Hoover it's called Hoover an extraordinary life just in extraordinary times. And it does of letters and politics and shows produced by the end of Martina's at the Clinton burg and Lucille Russo our engineer is Kristen Thomas if you like to find previous shows in the archives that keep pm a a large e I mean shows Rich thank you from the city. 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