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// Vice President: Charles Curtis // // Life: August 11, 1874 – October 20, 1964 // // Political Party: Republican // // Terms of Office: March 4, 1929 – March 4, 1933 //
 * Herbert Clark Hoover **

// President Hoover deserves a solid B- for his presidency. Although there were a lot of regrettable outcomes to some of his decisions, such as domino effect in the passing of the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act, you have to admit that Hoover had his head in the right place, and truly tried harder than you could say for a vast majority of the previous presidents. So even though his ideas didn’t always work, he deserves a B- for his attempts. // // Hoover’s goals as president, focused around helping out with the surplus of agricultural goods in the country, enforcing the prohibition law, and later on in his presidency, aiding the people during the Great Depression. Under his watch, the Federal Farm Board was created to attempt to help the farmers out of the slump they were in. With the rest of the economy booming, and an advance in machinery, farmers were able to create more than enough food, and were left with lots of surplus goods that they couldn’t sell. The board was supposed to sell that extra food, in order to give the farmers some profit. However, it was created with poor authority in charge of it, and was eventually dismantled some 4 years later. Another goal was to enforce prohibition throughout the country, this was a poor choice on Hoover’s part considering that the majority of the population did not support this law, choosing to ignore it, and proving that the government truly is run by the people as the idea was eventually diminished. Once the Great Depression came about, Hoover switched tactics and focused on helping the people suffering. His relief programs were not always effective, such as the poor decision in the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act, but his attempts are to be noted. //

// The president’s relationship with congress could’ve been better to say the least. Although the Republicans did have a majority in the beginning of his presidency, he still didn’t get along as well as he could’ve. Their relationship could be marked as average in the beginning, but once the economy crashed congress started trying to pass as many relief measures as they could, and that’s when Hoover began vetoing. Once the veto’s began, the problems arose. However, the veto’s were mainly based on the fact that Hoover did not like the idea of the government directly spending on the people to help them out, whereas congress argued that it no longer mattered at this point, because the people needed the help. // // The best decision made on Hoover’s part was the Good Neighbor Policy. This greatly benefited the country by improving international affairs with Latin America. The policy simply said that we would keep to ourselves and stop poking our noses in everybody else’s business. This meaning that we pulled our troops from Nicaragua, as well as helping out with an issue between Bolivia and Chile. This policy was added and improved upon by T.D.R, but Hoover deserves the credit for laying the foundation for the policy and making it possible. //

// The worst decision during Hoover’s presidency was the dealings with the Bonus Army. Wanting the government to pay up, war veterans camped outside of the White House in protest. Demanding their money made sense though, considering how poor the economy was doing. Roosevelt only called for the camps to be removed, so this really isn’t his fault so to speak, however it did have an extremely negative effect on his presidency. General MacArthur ignored Hoover’s orders for a “peaceful removal” and became unnecessarily violent. Destroying camps and using arms, it was an embarrassment to Hoover’s presidency and he was held accountable considering the fact that MacArthur was under his command. //

// The decision that had the lasting impact on the country, was the Hawley-Smoot Tariff of 1930. This originally was to help boost the economy in the time of need, initially falling back on Hoover’s first goal which was to aid the farmers. This had the opposite effect however, because it raised the tariff a ridiculous amount from 38 to nearly 60 percent which created unhappy foreign countries who responded with a raising of their tariffs, resulting in a tariff war. When Britain rose their tariff, our economy suffered even more because we now had to pay extra for the goods that we needed. Because of the depression, America was pressuring Britain and France for the repayment of war debts, who responded by saying that they had no way to gain the money because of our high tariffs. They turned to Germany, and began to put the pressure on them, demanding their war debts, and Germany turned back to us. So ultimately, this created a whole mess of debt, continued to drag down the economy, and resulted with depressions in other countries as well as our own. It could also be tagged as a causing factor of WWII because of those depressions. All in all, this wasn’t his greatest idea, but did leave quite the impact. //

// In conclusion, I think that Hoover does deserve his grade of a B-. Yes, there were a lot of things that did go wrong while he was in charge, but I do not think that these were directly his fault. The Hawley-Smoot Tariff was created with good intentions, and truly was an alright idea. Its results were unpredictable at the time. But considering the positives of his presidency, such as his advancements in foreign policy and his multiple attempts at relief programs, although not always the most successful, Hoover was a good president and the country was better off with him. //

//**__ Works Cited __**//

// Picture - [] //  "American President: Herbert Clark Hoover." Miller Center of Public Affairs. Web. 29 April 2010. <[]>.

Degregorio, William A.. //The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, Seventh Edition (Complete Book of Us Presidents)//. 7 ed. Fort Lee: Barricade Books, 2009. Print.

"Presidential Vetoes, 1789–2008 — Infoplease.com." //Infoplease: Encyclopedia, Almanac, Atlas, Biographies, Dictionary, Thesaurus.// N.p., n.d. Web. 29 April 2010. []