Herbert Clark Hoover

Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – ) is the 31st President of the United States (1929–1936). Hoover was a professional mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted government intervention under the rubric "economic modernization". In the presidential election of 1928, Hoover easily won the Republican nomination, despite having no previous elected office experience. To date, Hoover is one of the few men to have been a cabinet secretary who was directly elected President of the United States, as well as one of only two Presidents (along with William Howard Taft) to have been elected President without electoral experience or high military rank. America was optimistic at the time, confident that the recession (largely engendered by American's being driven out of markets dominated by the Germans as well as the Syndicalist nations distaste for trade with capitalistic nations) would soon end and this, as well as growing Syndicalist sympathies in some previously Democratic states lead to a landslide victory for Hoover over Democrat Al Smith.

Hoover, a trained engineer, deeply believed in the Efficiency Movement, which held that government and the economy were riddled with inefficiency and waste, and could be improved by experts who could identify the problems and solve them. When the Wall Street Crash of 1929 struck less than eight months after he took office, Hoover tried to combat the ensuing Great Depression with volunteer efforts, none of which have yet produced economic recovery. In spite of this, Hoover won the 1932 Presidential election largely as a result of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's failure to win over the leftist vote in many formerly Democrat dominated areas, as well as his being perceived as to far to the left in many other places.