Presidents in Retirement: Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover had gone from hero to goat. Once considered the most brilliant man in America, once elected President in a landslide, Hoover now found himself on the other side of that landslide. He had lost his bid for re-election to Franklin Roosevelt in a bitter contest and many Americans blamed Hoover for the Great Depression that they were in the midst of. It is said that Hoover was so angry with Roosevelt that he refused to speak to his successor during the car ride to FDR's inauguration.
Hoover left Washington in March of 1933 a bitter man. Hoover was the only living former president from 1933 to 1953, but Roosevelt never called on him for advice. Hoover and his wife Lou lived in Palo Alto, California until her death in 1944. After that Hoover lived at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City for the rest of his life.
During the 1930s, Hoover increasingly referred to himself as a conservative. He followed national events very closely after leaving the Presidency, and he was a constant critic of Franklin Roosevelt. To facilitate these attacks, Hoover wrote more than two dozen books, including his 1934 book, The Challenge to Liberty, in which Hoover harshly criticized Roosevelt's New Deal. Hoover labelled two of the New Deal's programs, the National Recovery Administration and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, as "fascistic." He called the 1933 Banking Act a "move to gigantic socialism".
Hoover was only 58 years old when he left office, and he still believed that he might serve another term as president. At the 1936 Republican Convention, Hoover gave a speech attacking the New Deal and it was well received by party faithful, but he was still seen as unelectable and the party's presidential nomination went to Kansas governor Alf Landon. In the election campaign, Hoover delivered numerous well-publicized speeches on behalf of Landon, but Landon was defeated by Roosevelt. Hoover was only too happy to criticize Roosevelt every chance he got, but some leading Republicans like Senator Arthur Vandenberg urged Hoover to stay silend during some of their fights with FDR, including the the debate over Roosevelt's proposed court-packing plan known as the Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937.
At the 1940 Republican National Convention, Hoover still had hopes of winning his party's presidential nomination, but it went to the popular businessman Wendell Willkie, who lost to Roosevelt in the general election.
During a 1938 trip to Europe, Hoover met with Adolf Hitler and he stayed at Herman Goring's hunting lodge. But he was critical of Hitler's persecution of Jews in Germany and he later expressed his belief that Hitler was mad. However he did not think that Hitler posed a threat to the U.S. Instead, Hoover criticized Roosevelt's policies which he said provoked Japan and discouraged France and the United Kingdom from reaching an "accommodation" with Germany.
After the September 1939 invasion of Poland by Germany, Hoover opposed U.S. involvement in World War II. He criticized Roosevelt's "Lend-Lease" policy with Great Britain and he was active in the "American First" isolationist group. Roosevelt made offers to Hoover to help coordinate relief in Europe, but Hoover refused. However after the beginning of the occupation of Belgium, Hoover provided aid for Belgian civilians. He had earlier led a group known as the Finnish Relief Fund, which donated money to aid Finnish civilians and refugees after the Soviet Union attacked Finland.
During a radio broadcast on June 29, 1941, one week after Germany attacked the Soviet Union, Hoover expressed opposition to any sort of alliance between the U.S. and the USSR. He said, "if we join the war and Stalin wins, we have aided him to impose more communism on Europe and the world. War alongside Stalin to impose freedom is more than a travesty. It is a tragedy."
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hoover was not called upon to serve in any war effort. He did not pursue the presidential nomination at the 1944 Republican National Convention, and at the request of Republican nominee Thomas Dewey, he refrained from campaigning during the general election.
In 1945, Hoover advised President Harry S. Truman to drop the United States' demand for the unconditional surrender of Japan, but Hoover was unaware of the Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb.
After World War II, Hoover befriended President Harry Truman despite their ideological differences. Because of Hoover's experience with Germany at the end of World War I, in 1946 Truman asked Hoover to tour the portion of Germany occupied by the Allies, to ascertain the food needs of the occupied nations. After touring Germany, Hoover wrote a report that was critical of U.S. occupation policy On Hoover's initiative, a school meals program in the portions of Germany occupied by the US and Great Britain was commenced on April 14, 1947. This program aided 3,500,000 children.
In 1947 Truman appointed Hoover to lead the Commission on the Organization of the Executive Branch of the US Government, a high level study. Truman accepted some of the recommendations of the "Hoover Commission" for eliminating waste, fraud, and inefficiency, consolidating agencies, and strengthening White House control of policy. Hoover concluded that a stronger presidency was now required with the transition into the atomic age.
During the 1948 Presidential election, Hoover supported Republican nominee Thomas Dewey, but he remained on good terms with Truman. Hoover supported the concept of the United Nations in principle, but he opposed granting membership to the Soviet Union or to other communist nations.
In 1949, New York governor Thomas Dewey offered Hoover the Senate seat vacated by Robert Wagner, which required filling the vacancy for two months, but Hoover declined the offer.
Hoover supported conservative leader Robert Taft at the 1952 Republican National Convention but the party picked popular General Dwight Eisenhower as its candidate, and Eisenhower went on to win the election. Eisenhower appointed Hoover to another presidential commission, but Hoover disliked Eisenhower, criticizing him for failing to roll back the New Deal.
In 1958, Congress passed the Former Presidents Act, which provided a $25,000 annual pension (equivalent to approximately $265,000 today) to each former president. Hoover took the pension even though he did not need the money, in order to avoid embarrassing Truman, whose was in dire financial straits.
In the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy offered Hoover various positions; Hoover declined the offers. Hoover defended Kennedy after the botched Bay of Pigs invasion, and he was saddened by Kennedy's assassination.
Hoover wrote several books during his retirement, including The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson. Hoover strongly defended Wilson's actions at the Paris Peace Conference in the book.
In the last two years of his life, Hoover suffered a number of health problems. In August 1962 he had an operation in which a growth on his large intestine. Hoover died in New York City on October 20, 1964, following massive internal bleeding. Just six days earlier he had sent a get-well message to his friend Harry Truman, after he heard that Truman had sustained injuries from slipping in a bathroom. He wrote: "Bathtubs are a menace to ex-presidents for as you may recall a bathtub rose up and fractured my vertebrae when I was in Venezuela on your world famine mission in 1946. My warmest sympathy and best wishes for your recovery."
Two months earlier, on August 10, Hoover reached the age of 90, becoming only the second U.S. president (John Adams was the first) to live to that age. When asked how he felt on reaching the milestone, Hoover replied, "Too old." At the time of his death, Hoover had been out of office for over 31 years (11,553 days all together). This was the longest retirement in presidential history until Jimmy Carter broke that record in September 2012.
Hoover was honored with a state funeral. He lay in state in the United States Capitol Rotunda, and President Lyndon Johnson attended, along with former presidents Truman and Eisenhower. On October 25, he was buried in West Branch, Iowa, near his presidential library and birthplace on the grounds of the Herbert Hoover National Historic Site. Afterwards, Hoover's wife, Lou Henry Hoover, who had been buried in Palo Alto, California, following her death in 1944, was re-interred beside him.