2008 Woodie Awards
When prosperity wasn't just around the corner
Jenna Sauers - The Daily Iowan
Issue date: 7/6/07 Section: Arts
The peaceful Herbert Hoover Library and Museum, set on sprawling 186-acre grounds in West Branch, seems engineered to thwart noise, hustle, and overexcitement at every turn. The curvilinear roads and paths promote meandering. The soft rustle of the wind in the 76 acres of tall-grass prairie almost obscures the drone of I-80 immediately to the south.
"Hoover is now remembered as a statesman and a humanitarian with a great vision for his country," says a male narrator of the 22-minute film about Hoover's life. We see still images and stock footage: Hoover separated from his siblings. Hoover at Stanford. Hoover and his wife, Lou Henry Hoover, in China during the Boxer Rebellion. The subtext is clear: Hoover went places. Hoover met challenges.
But Iowa's only president remains indelibly associated with the Great Depression, which began in his first year of office. Hoover's candidacy for worst U.S. president is periodically debated by historians, a question given more currency by the recent but generally accepted addition of George W. Bush to the pantheon of failed executives.
There are a number of parallels between the 31st and 43rd administrations. In 2004, Bush became the first president since Hoover to end a term with a net loss of jobs. Hoover went from a landslide electoral victory in 1928 to a mega-landslide defeat four years later. Bush dropped from the highest approval rating in the history of presidential polling - 90 percent shortly after 9/11 - to 26 percent approval last month. A man tried to kill Hoover with dynamite. A man tried to kill Bush with a grenade.
But perhaps most eerily similar are the two presidents' mishandlings of water-related disasters involving New Orleans. Hoover, as secretary of Commerce, mobilized the Red Cross to prevent an outbreak of cholera and typhoid following the 1927 Mississippi flood, the most disastrous river flood in U.S. history. But he suppressed reports of white landowners who forced blacks at gunpoint to work long hours for no pay rebuilding towns and levees. Within two years, a full 50 percent of the Mississippi Delta's black population departed for the North, hastening the Great Migration. Whether or not Bush cares about black people, his hapless mismanagement of Hurricane Katrina's aftermath has precipitated a similar change in New Orleans demographics today.
"Hoover is now remembered as a statesman and a humanitarian with a great vision for his country," says a male narrator of the 22-minute film about Hoover's life. We see still images and stock footage: Hoover separated from his siblings. Hoover at Stanford. Hoover and his wife, Lou Henry Hoover, in China during the Boxer Rebellion. The subtext is clear: Hoover went places. Hoover met challenges.
But Iowa's only president remains indelibly associated with the Great Depression, which began in his first year of office. Hoover's candidacy for worst U.S. president is periodically debated by historians, a question given more currency by the recent but generally accepted addition of George W. Bush to the pantheon of failed executives.
There are a number of parallels between the 31st and 43rd administrations. In 2004, Bush became the first president since Hoover to end a term with a net loss of jobs. Hoover went from a landslide electoral victory in 1928 to a mega-landslide defeat four years later. Bush dropped from the highest approval rating in the history of presidential polling - 90 percent shortly after 9/11 - to 26 percent approval last month. A man tried to kill Hoover with dynamite. A man tried to kill Bush with a grenade.
But perhaps most eerily similar are the two presidents' mishandlings of water-related disasters involving New Orleans. Hoover, as secretary of Commerce, mobilized the Red Cross to prevent an outbreak of cholera and typhoid following the 1927 Mississippi flood, the most disastrous river flood in U.S. history. But he suppressed reports of white landowners who forced blacks at gunpoint to work long hours for no pay rebuilding towns and levees. Within two years, a full 50 percent of the Mississippi Delta's black population departed for the North, hastening the Great Migration. Whether or not Bush cares about black people, his hapless mismanagement of Hurricane Katrina's aftermath has precipitated a similar change in New Orleans demographics today.
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