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American POTUS - Hal Wert - A Tale of Two Herbert Hoovers

• Alan Lowe

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alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Welcome to American POTUS. I'm your host, Alan Lowe, and I so appreciate your joining us. I'm excited today to welcome back Dr. Hal Wert. Now, as I'm sure you remember, Hal, a professor emeritus of history at the Kansas City Art Institute, joined us a while back to discuss his terrific book, Hoover vs. Roosevelt, Two Presidents Battle Over Feeding Europe and Going to War. Now, we didn't have time back then, so I asked Hal back. I'm so glad he agreed to talk about another of his works that also features President Hoover. This one titled Hoover, the fishing president, portrait of the private man and his life outdoors. How? Welcome back to American POTUS.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

Well, thank you. It's a privilege to be here, sir.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Uh, so enjoyed our last conversation. I've told you a lot of folks have listened to that episode. I'm sure they'll, they'll join them for this one. Uh, before we get into it, uh, we were talking a bit before we, we started recording here that I grew up on a farm in Kentucky and I would go fishing, uh, for catfish. I was in no way a great fisherman Like Herbert Hoover was where are you a fisherman?

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

Well, kind of. I think when I was a boy, my brother and I would go fishing and we'd catch, and when, I lived in Minnesota till I was seven, so I would fish off the dock and get sunfish and perch, and my mom would fix them for breakfast, but occasionally we'd fish when I was in high school, and there again, mostly catfish, but no, I am no fisherman on the level of Herbert Hoover.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Yeah, I will say I'm off. My wife just caught her first fish ever. We were in Savannah, Georgia on the On the pier. And this fellow had a fish hooked on his hook and let her bring it in. And she was very proud of that house. So it's a, it was a first for, for Mrs. Lowe. Um, but I, uh, I am no way am a pro at this, but I, I remember many, many great hours on the farm doing it. And I so enjoyed learning more about Herbert Hoover and how fishing played a role in his life. And Herbert Hoover, we've talked now twice about Hoover. You've written a couple of books. Uh, let me ask you this question. What, what led you to Hoover? Why did you gravitate to the study of Herbert Hoover?

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

Well, I mean, my friends told me that would probably be a waste of time, I give it. His reputation in the presidency, but my thesis was on voluntary food conservation programs of the Truman administration. And I ran into Hoover there when he was going around the world, garnering grain and commitments for grain to help feed Europeans. This is before, uh, this is in 1946 and 47. And occasionally I'd run into things that contradicted the image I'd sort of been taught of Hoover. That he was uptight, poor speaker, high collar, sort of a curmudgeon. But even the working on my thesis didn't break my, my view at that point. But then I decided, okay, I'm gonna go back because of what I learned about Hoover. And see what he did in 1939, in terms of voluntary food conservation programs, or, well, actually in terms of programs for the, for the Poles and for the Lithuanians and for the Hungarians. And starting to do that research, I kept running into things that contradicted the image, that made me interested and made me want to look at it. And what I thought was, there's really a tale of two hoovers. the one Hoover is well known, the public Hoover, but the private Hoover is not known at all. And could I find enough material to write a biography from the inside out? And that was my intention in doing so. I never thought of it as revisionist history. I thought of it as completing the record. That we'd actually get the tale of the two Hoovers and then we could decide better what kind of a president and what kind of a human being he was.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

It's so important to go back and take that look to look at those raw materials and to make those analyses, based on looking back in time and using the archives, you know, how I was an archivist for many years and, uh, that's where my, my heart still is. So it's a much fuller picture we get of Herbert Hoover. Uh, thanks to you. Uh, looking at the young Hoover, you start with his youth in Iowa. By the age of 11, both of his parents were dead.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

They

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

And he, he moved from Iowa out to Oregon, lived with his uncle. Uh, how did that love of the outdoors help him during that move? And how did that move affect his, his life? His personality outlook.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

before he went. And of course in, you know, actually when he's growing up in West Branch, that's sort of the frontier.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Mm hmm.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

it's still moving west, but it's still very much frontier. And he and his brother spent a lot of time outdoors. And I think that, you know, a lot of kids do that, but I think after his parents died and he went to Oregon, it sort of helped sustain him and keep him out of the way of his uncle. I think too. In the circumstances were different. I mean, he, he, his brother wrote a poem, about the death of their two parents that said that, you know, they were their whole world had been shattered.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Mm

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

course, they were divided up. The children all went different places. And later in Oregon, when they're about 16 or 17, they are reunited. But so the family is totally broken up. Henry John Minthorn was stern, but I think that have largely overestimated how stern he was. I think Hoover later said that, things from childhood, later don't necessarily mean so much as you tend to get more objectivity. One of the things that made me think that. is that while he worked Hoover hard and the other kids in that neighborhood did too, they, we did onions, they did all kinds of things and long, hard days. But, Henry John was an extremely interesting human being. He served in the Union Army, even though he was a Quaker, he did not, as some historians say, have combat duty. He was in logistics in, Tennessee during most of the war with the Iowa unit. But he provided for them, well, I mean, in the late 1880s, Hoover and the other two mentor children are getting a$5 a week allowance.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

hmm. Mm

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

he had some extra spending money, and of course he was ambitious and worked hard and. know, he's the kind of individual I think that's absolutely, really wants to prove himself. Um, and he's highly energetic and he, from early age on, was a little hustler, essentially.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

hmm.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

He worked for the Oregon Land Company and he got 20 a month for doing that when he was 17. And he did all kinds of unique things in terms of advertising and selling land. Meeting people at the train, making sure they had a hotel, making sure they got to tour the farms that had been previously set up. So, you know, he's, that's the kind of track he's on,

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Yeah, this seems like a dynamo all the time. And part of that is he ends up going to Stanford

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

he

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

he meets his future wife, Lou Henry. They shared a love of the outdoors. How important do you think that was to that?

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

I think

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

long marriage.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

important. She had grown up that way, too. She was born in Waterloo, Iowa, by chance, and, and her father was a banker in Southern California, and she spent a lot of time outdoors hunting and fishing and trapping. and they did a lot of that together while they were in Stanford. Almost every summer from his sophomore year on, he worked for the geological survey, surveying, the land in the mountains between the California and Nevada border, and he spent one whole summer in Arkansas, uh, by himself, where he just did his work and then found places to stay at night. with different families, and that's, of course, a really underdeveloped area and part of the world. But yeah, I think that's very important to the two of them.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Now you say his first 20 years in engineering, mining engineering, he spent in the relentless pursuit of money, really making his name around the world. How did fishing play a role in that in both the advancement of that career and in finding some kind of relaxation for this dynamic man out making that name?

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

surprised, Alan, it didn't.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Ah, right.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

Uh, and, and he may have fished in South Africa, but no, I mean, in Australia and China, he was really busy, and working for BWIC and mooring. But by the time he was 26 years old, he was a millionaire. Uh, and then he just, just kept piling it up. And so in that period, no, I don't think fishing in the outdoors, is much of a factor.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Now, as he earns those riches, he makes a name for himself, he enters the political world. How would you define his political philosophy as he enters that new sphere of operations?

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

in a sense, I don't think he was ever much of a politician, and that's part of his problem. He's a great desk man, but he didn't like politics, and he didn't like to do what politicians do, and I think that hurt him when he was in the presidency during the Depression. But during World War I, as World War I started, he got involved with the Ambassador to Great Britain in helping Americans return, to the United States that were trapped there by the outbreak of the war. And he really liked that, and decided, okay, I've got enough money, maybe I'll try something else. And that's when he got involved in feeding the Belgians and developed the Committee for Belgian Relief, which ended up feeding nearly 10 million Belgians and people in northern France. so then in the Wilson administration, he's offered a war food administrator. So it becomes a kind of food czar, you know, everybody in America hooverizing to

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

hmm.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

money and that sort of thing. So all of those years, there's really not much fishing going on. But when he comes home from Versailles, depressed and disappointed, he didn't approve. He thought the Treaty of Versailles was far too, harsh. Um, and he shared that with several other people. But that's when he picks up and starts to go outdoors again and also spend more time with his children. In fact, from about 1914 to 1929, he didn't see them that much.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Mm hmm. Well, what about Harding and Coolidge? So after, after the Wilson administration, how did he interact with those two presidents?

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

I might say this, I was trained mostly as a liberal democratic historian and then moved away from that. of the reason I moved away from that is that It's not that liberal historians hadn't written good histories and solid work, but it's what they didn't do that was important. And Harding and Coolidge and Hoover were things they didn't do. Uh, and that's only been more recently. You know, uh, Amity Shales has done

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Mm hmm.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

on Coolidge.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Yes.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

good work on the Depression. And of course, uh, now he's being touted by her as one of the great American presidents. I just finished her biography and really enjoyed it. But I think there's a about, about Harding. Harding was a very popular American president. Uh, and had he not died in the Palace Hotel in 1923, I'm convinced his election was pretty well reassured. All this, if he, if that had happened, all of the scandals, that plagued his administration would have come out in a second term. But it's late 1923 and on, on, on the way to Alaska. Hoover liked him very much and he liked Hoover. And they did the Alaska trip, the first American president to visit Seward's Folly, Harding's blood pressure when he got on the ship was the 180. Uh, and he was exhausted and he played bridge every day, all day long, and Hoover hated doing that.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Mm hmm. Mm

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

in the process of coming back, of course, he, he has an attack in Seattle and, and, uh, then on to San Francisco where he dies in the Palace Hotel. But, you know, this is August of 1923, so there wasn't that much left of his presidency. But Hoover liked him very much. Who he didn't like very much was Coolidge. It's not clear, you know, I, George Nash and I are good friends. George is a maniacal empiricist. That's what I admire most about him. I

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

uh, you know, did Hoover ever actually call Coolidge that little man? Yeah, but other people did and Hoover probably did too, but I like George. George is looking for evidence that that's

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

case. Um, but what I've seen is he did. And. Coolidge, on the other hand, didn't like Hoover. He called him the Wonder Boy.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Mm hmm.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

supposedly, when things hit his desk that were difficult, he'd just say, Give it to the Wonder Boy.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Mm hmm.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

the difference between Harding and Coolidge and Hoover is very different.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Yeah. And Hoover, Secretary of Commerce. Is that right? For? Yeah.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

You know, when he took it over, it was a very small department. In fact, the, the Commerce Secretary that had preceded him said basically all he did, had to do was turn the lighthouse lights off and on along the coast. And of course, Hoover's an empire builder. And if you let Hoover in the door, he's going to build an empire. And that caused, I guess this, it may, this may be too strong, but I think you could do a book. administration that's more like the book on Lincoln about a cabinet being, a cabinet of rivals.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Yeah. Team Arrivals. Doris Kearns Goodwin. Yes. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

liked that

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

hmm.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

but Henry Wallace, of course, didn't like him and Hoover took over sections and Harding would approve of it if other people's turf. And so there's a kind of turf war that's going on and Hoover takes the Department of Congress and really builds it into an incredibly first rate kind of department., he's into standardizing, standardizing lumber, uh, deciding about radio. Radio's the new thing. He's the one that decides that the stations east of the Mississippi will keep their WHOs or whatever. And west of the Mississippi will be Ks, KRNT or whatever. There's a few early stations like WHO in Des Moines that's on the other side of the Mississippi. And they didn't change that, but that's the kind of thing he's into. he was too as a mining engineer. He had a good eye for that sort of thing.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Mm

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

he's a workaholic. also was really into home economics. He was into all the new sciences. He was into time management. Uh, And he also liked very much to, on new issues to get together and have conferences in Washington, where he invited the best and the brightest, but the thing people didn't like about it is for Hoover, it's not always that he listened to everybody that was there, as much as he kind of made his positions known and hoped that people would come to support him. They're

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

hmm. I see. Well, I will remind our listeners. We a while back spoke to Amity Shlaes on on American POTUS about Coolidge and soon I'm speaking with Ryan Walters about his book on President Harding. So we're making sure both of those presidents are fully represented on here. Um, Hoover makes the big move in 28 and runs for the presidency successfully. How would you characterize that campaign and did fishing play a role in it?

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

Well, phishing had begun to play a role. Hoover's biggest problem is he does not know how to manage his public persona. And he never figures out a way to do that because he really guards his privacy. and you know, he won't hold up fish he hasn't caught. I've got numerous photographs of him pretending like he's holding the fish, but the other person is in fact holding it. He won't kiss babies, he won't dress up like Calvin Cooley's like doing, cowboy outfits sort of thing to please the press. Um, but, that he was going to be president. There's almost a kind of inevitability there. During the commission for Belgium relief in the 1916, 1917, there's already a Hoover for president movement going on and particularly amongst people that worked in the CRB and then in 1920, his name is put forward in several primaries. In 1920, he actually won the Michigan primary as a Democrat, and he came in fourth on the same primary as a Republican, and it's interesting to think how his life might have been different if he would have run for president in 1920 because it's a Republican year.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Yeah, absolutely.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

would have won, but of course that didn't happen. I think because of his Quakerism, he was always embarrassed about talking about his own ambitions. And so he let other people, encouraged other people to carry his flag. Uh, which they were more than willing to do. So the 1928 campaign, of course, it's a big victory, and I think, you know, there's some other things going on, too. I think Hoover was the first president born west of the Mississippi, and he's a Stanford graduate, and I think he looked at his solid victory in 1928. In fact, you know, um, it's a landslide. That was a victory for the West and for a victory for the new technocratic rising middle class and a victory for Stanford The people in this cabinet are mostly from the West and many from Stanford and I think that's the way they think about it That you know that it's a new day for the rising middle class. I think he wanted to engineer Kind of be the transformational president from the older epoch to the new

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

I see.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

not very successful at doing that, but I think that's what he has in mind. He's into individualism. He believes in volunteerism. And of course, that means during the Depression, he's loathe to demand that the Congress undertake certain things that might have been more helpful.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

So I know he's very private, fairly emotionalist in his public utterances. So you say his associates helped with the campaign. Did the public buy into the vision being put forth by those associates or did they like the technocratic aura being put forth? I would see successful

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

be well, he had, he had a reputation. I mean, nobody probably had a greater reputation practically coming into the presidency than herbert Hoover did in 1927. He was the savior of Belgium. Um, he was the a RA, the American Relief Administration that had provided aid even to the Sylvia Union. His opposition used to say he was adamantly opposed to communism, but he saved it. Because of feeding the Russians in 1920 and 1921. And then he had the, you know, the German children's feeding program. Uh, one night on a trip to Europe, I was with a group of, uh, German diplomats. And two of them came up to me and said we've seen what your work is doing on Hoover, and, uh, we want you to know that when we were children, we would not have survived the Hoover Spice Up. then, of course, 1927, Coolidge gives him the Mississippi Flood, which is like Katrina. It's one of the great disasters of American flood history, and he handles it well. So part of it is he's in the newspaper every day and he's successful at it. So I think what they see there, I think is competence and ability.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

I see So he's elected president in a landslide and his love of outdoors leads him while he's in the white house to establish Camp rapidan am I saying that correctly?

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

Yeah. I mean, after he came back in 1919, he goes to Florida for the first time and starts to fish and he began to fish more in the West, his favorite McKinsey river and Oregon and other places during the presidency. It's cut back considerably. But he continues to do it, and then he did build Camp Rapidan, he was looking for a place to and he went to what would become Camp David and took a look at it, and decided no, and so he put his people out from Washington looking at a place, and typically Hoover had a long list of specifics. It had to be about 2, 200 feet, because mosquitoes couldn't get above that, uh, he hated mosquitoes with a dedicated passion. And partially because of his time in China. And, so anyway, they found this beautiful spot and then he and Lou Henry went ahead and hired an architect and designed it. Have you been there?

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

I have not is is in maryland

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

It's in Virginia.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Virginia. Oh, okay. Ah.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

it is amazing. Really beautiful.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

I'll need to go.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

camp. Uh, one of my friends who was a um, aide to con, uh, Arkansas. Congressman, used to go up there to fish.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Well, I'll have to do a remote American POTUS from there. I think that's, that's on the plans now, how we'll have to do that.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

American

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

I'll, yeah, I'll have to go and tape from that. Sounds, sounds beautiful. It

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

right. The buildings had to be right. So many feet apart, that sort of thing. He never thought of his aid as being charity. He thought of it as a scientific response, an empirical response to particular disasters. Like, you know, he had lists of foods, like, for Europeans, he wouldn't export beans, because they took too much fuel to cook. And he has a long list of things like that. So in one sense, he's maniacal about it, but you'll see if you go to Rapidan, it's a beautiful camp and he spent lots of time there. Uh, Roosevelt used to do great impressions, at dinner parties of Hoover driving, to Rapidan, running everyone off the road. Uh, Franklin Roosevelt would say, and that the people went ahead of him and shut the streams down on each side of the bridge, uh, and put fish. in there for him to catch and the fish had pet names. And when he'd start to do those mocking routines on other people, Eleanor would always say, now, Franklin, was the green light. And he would go ahead and do that. And people said they were absolutely hilarious. He said then that they brought out a big, comfortable chair. And Hoover would sit in the chair and catch the pet fish.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

really humanizes them to hear about FDR doing that kind of thing.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

when, you know, Hoover could, Hoover could get some slaps back too. One

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Mm hmm.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

was that, uh, Roosevelt was like a chameleon on plaid.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

They are, uh, that rivalry that we spoke about last time is so interesting and so important. My next question is, is it really about that? How in that post defeat where Hoover is in these constant battles with FDR, the, the desire at some point trying to get back to the White House how did fishing play a part of that? Since we're talking about him as a fishing president. Yeah, mm hmm. Mm

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

he tried to use fishing and to get out and to be with friends and to go to the Madison river in Yellowstone and other places, but it, I don't think it would really do it. I mean. For Hoover, it's a real shock. He's, he has known nothing but outrageous success. And bang, he can't win the 32 election, and it takes him a few years to understand that the depression is the albatross around his neck, and for whatever reasons, right or wrong, he owns it.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

hmm.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

And that's really hard for him.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Was he able to relax doing fishing? No, no, okay

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

Hoover has a hard time relaxing period. You know, he's always has his hands in his pocket, jingling change. You know, he's very gerbil like I think suffer from the same thing. So anyway, but yeah, I think that was really hard for him at first. And, uh, there's that good story that, About 1933 or 4, Hoover and his big Buick is driving down the parkway in California at 60 miles an hour and the highway patrolman pulls him home. about 2 o'clock in the morning. He's on his way back to Stanford. They've been up camping in Oregon and it's too hot. And Stanford is always cool, uh, Palo Alto. Uh, and the patrolman puts his foot on the running board and looks at the license. And says, are you that guy? And Hoover looks at him and said, yeah, well, I, yeah, yeah, I guess I am that guy. Then the patrolman takes his foot off, hams him back the license and says, does it make you feel better to drive down the California parkway at 60 miles an hour at two o'clock in the morning? And Hoover hesitated for a minute and said, yeah, I think it does. Then the patrolman saluted him and said, drive on brother.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

That's the kind of patrolman you want to run into I like that

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

That's true. So yeah, then fishing picks up. And at first. You know, reman did not go well. I mean, if the reman we just had, you could say the tensions were palpable. They certainly were between Hoover and Roosevelt. And Hoover spent most of the inter eum like most presidents do, trying to coax the president elect to adopt their policies. And of course, Roosevelt wouldn't do that. So in some ways, instead of even listening to some recommendations that might have. been good for him to listen to. He did not. and the ride to the, and the changeover ceremony was a difficult one. And then Hoover was upset and nobody's quite figured out why, but when he got out of the train, to go to New York, there was no secret service for him. He blamed Roosevelt. Roosevelt denied it. I've spent a good deal of time trying to figure out who did what to whom, but it's not clear

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Now this one last thing on his Being unable to relax, I noticed in pretty much every photo you included of Hoover fishing, he has on a coat and tie. Was

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

But.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

that normal or is that just Hoover? Okay.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

seems so strange now, but that's normal. If you look at Al Smith, it's the same thing. Uh, and he continued to do that. I have a few pictures. Uh, in the, uh, maybe about 19, uh, 21, 22 in commerce, where he actually has an open collar on.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Oh.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

never, ever run into that.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Right. Yeah.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

think, uh, do you have the hard back or the paperback copy

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

I have the paperback.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

Good, because I love the cover,

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Yeah. Oh, it's terrific. Yeah.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

and that I found that in the Siski museum in, uh, Eureka, California. But I think it's one of the best pictures of Hoover. I've worked hard to try to find pictures of him privately relaxing because privately he drank a martini and a half, probably two every afternoon. Uh, ate macadamia nuts from Hawaii that he loved and what he called yellow cheddar cheese, wrapped cheese and crackers. And so, you know, he was then, I mean, there was always the cocktail hour dinner was always at eight, that sort of thing. He ate most of the fish he caught. He loved it. I mean, I don't think there's very many human beings that ate more fish than Hoover did. but he also was a raconteur who could tell jokes and none of that is available to the public.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Mm hmm. I'll think of it.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

I can't remember in which book, but that Peggy Newton had made the comment that one of the people she knew, uh, had that same problem back and forth. Uh, and I made the comment that, uh, that Peggy Noonan had never known Herbert Hoover.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Yeah. Hmm.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

Dorsona. Uh, and so that continues and, you know, he's not a great speaker. But he always made friends that were loyal to absolutely loyal and he was good about putting people around him who were competent. Um, the rules were this, the open discussions could take place, but once they had decided on something. You would not deviate.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Hmm. Hmm.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

But he was open to all kinds of suggestions in the process. But then, if you deviated, you were excommunicated.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Interesting.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

Uh, he could be harsh, and he could be tough. I said, I think in Hoover, versus Roosevelt, that both he and Roosevelt could be SOBs on occasion, and really play hardball. But generally not. Hoover didn't use bad language very often, but when he did, he had not forgotten anything he learned in Australia.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Well, I know one president who could be a hardball who would give him hell is President Truman and he, he brought Hoover back from the political wilderness. What brought them together?

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

Uh, you know, I think, uh, when I was working on voluntary food conservations of the Truman administration, I got to interview Truman, uh, and have him sign pictures for me. And what I was working on was too low level for him and I didn't want to waste the hour. So all I said to him, it was on Charles Luckman and his role as head of the citizen food committee. And he knew Luckman and who was from Kansas city and, uh VIP in the soap world. But it wasn't going to go very well, so I said, well, tell me about your relationship with Strom Thurmond, and I never had to say another word. But I think, I think Truman very much that Hoover had been mistreated, uh, and they're both Midwestern boys from a poor background. Uh, you know, I don't think, I don't think it's fair, really. I shouldn't say that. I, Truman, a little bit, I mean, it was a struggling farm family. And Hoover, the Quaker families that Hoover lived in were never really poor.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

I mean, you know, they're certainly not upper, upper middle class affluent, but, I mean, they're self sufficient. And the whole clan, basically, once they're in Iowa, you know, aunts, uncles, they all end up in Oregon. So he has an extended family network. Uh, but yeah, I think that's what Truman thought, and Truman thought he should come back, and that, uh, that, you know, FDR, we're doing this now, so that it's the, the Gulf of America now. Um, but that's not unusual, that FDR took away the, the name of the Hoover Dam and called it, you know, FDR. Uh, after he was elected and Truman brought it back to Hoover. And so he put Hoover to work because he admired what he had done in World War I and with his relief operations and gave him the opportunity to travel around the world, rounding up grain and food supplies for Europe, which he did. And so they became, you know, an odd couple, but close. Truman amazingly, too, would sometimes, you know, have you been to, uh, Truman's summer house in Key West?

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

I sadly know.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

it's really good.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Yeah.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

It's really nice, but sometimes he and Bess would drive all the way up through the Keys together. And at one point, they stopped at the Key Largo Anglos to see Hoover and, and Truman just walked into the, you know, walked into the Key Largo Anglos club and said he wanted to see Hoover and people at the bar and they'd say, what's a Democrat doing in this Republican club?

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Yeah.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

And, and, but he left Bess in the car. so they go get Hoover and Hoover says, I got to get my shoes, I got to get my shoes. And then nobody knows what they said, but they talked for about an hour and a half. Truman would call on him. I think they, they had a very warm relationship.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

The same wasn't true necessarily with, uh, Eisenhower. Is that right?

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

I'll tell you what Hoover, Hoover was a taft man and what Hoover had great hopes for is that when the Republicans back came back to power, they'd undo the new deal and Eisenhower has no intention of doing that. And in fact, Nixon expanded it to some degree. Uh, so. That's, I think, the disappointment. I don't think there was any necessary hostility there. And they did do a fishing trip together, and I think I included a picture or

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

hmm.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

that. But, you know, it's not a warm relationship. In 1958, He did ask Hoover to represent the United States, um, at the World's Fair in Brussels on the 4th of July and loaned him, uh, Air Force One, essentially the Columbine, to go do that, and Hoover was grateful for that. But no, he's a Taft man.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Well, Hal, I'll tell you, I, I so enjoyed learning more about Herbert Hoover thanks to you. What are you working on right now?

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

Well, that's interesting. I think, I can't do a book in less than five or six years. I know that's

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Not understood. Hmm.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

so I think, uh, I don't know. I, there's several things I'd like to do. I think when I'm percolating and thinking about new things, I tend to write three or four articles. And I've been playing around with the Stanford and the Hoover Institution on the relationship between Mark Sullivan and Hoover. And it's a deep relationship.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Hmm.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

They spent a tremendous amount of time together. They ate, oftentimes the Sullivans would eat at the White House two and three nights a week.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Hmm. Mm

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

they'd fish together and they'd spend hours at night trying to figure out what they could do about the Great Depression. Nobody's ever paid much attention to that. You know that the six volumes that Mark did, Our Times, he was going to do two more that included the Hoover administration, but he was getting older and there are a lot of notes and a lot of things, but never in kind of any manuscript

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

hmm. Mm hmm.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

But when Dan Rather did book, redoing of the six volumes that Mark Sullivan had written, he There's almost nothing in there about Hoover. And so you can learn a lot about Mark Solomon and know that, that he and who, that he and Hoover had a deeper personal relationship.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

Yeah. Well, let's, I look,

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

about exploring that.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

I look forward to that. You know, we want you back on American POTUS whenever we can have you here, Hal. Thank you so much for joining us again.

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

well, Alan, it's wonderful to talk to you. It's so much fun.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

And I now have two, at least two road trips I have to plan. So

hal-wert_1_01-23-2025_143152:

do. Yeah, I do. I think you'll, you, I think in both of them, uh, you know, Key West is fine too, because you know, you're going to get the Hemingway house and you're going to get the Tennessee Williams house too.

alan-lowe_1_01-23-2025_153151:

yeah, there you go. There you go. Well, thank you so much. And I want to, I want to thank everyone for joining us and for your support of American POTUS. You know, we're committed to bringing you amazing content like today's conversation, fascinating guests, all to advance our understanding of the presidents and the presidency. in a civil and nonpartisan way. So I appreciate everyone listening. I encourage you also to check out American FLOTUS, a podcast that American POTUS is producing in partnership with the First Ladies Association for Research and Education, or FLARE. You can find American FLOTUS at AmericanPOTUS. org, FLARE net. org, or on your favorite podcast platform. So thanks so much for joining us, and I'll see you next time on American POTUS.