Word: hooverisms
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...lost its bearings under J. Edgar Hoover, hounding Martin Luther , King Jr. and running wholesale spy operations against groups that opposed the Viet Nam War. A new and improved agency emerged during William Webster's nine years as director. But there was a palpable sense of deja vu in the air last week. First came news that a black agent had been racially harassed by his white colleagues. Then followed charges that the FBI had conducted wide- ranging surveillance of critics of the Reagan Administration's Central American policy...
...only problem with this plan is that it is precisely what Herbert Hoover did back in 1929. The economic chaos in the world rolled right on over him, and then history kicked him once he was down...
Ronald Reagan, fumbling around for a hold on the current mess, has been shouted at not to be a Herbert Hoover. But one has to wonder if neo-Hooverism wouldn't be just what is needed now. Hoover, a hands-on President, was arguably the most intelligent, experienced, compassionate and diligent President of the century. He was all the things Reagan is not. But Hoover's problems were different, his Government far less powerful than today's, and his ability to warm and win people was almost...
Reagan has a dramatically limited grasp of events, but he heads a powerful central Government and retains a remarkable hold on people's affection. And the message out of Black Monday is that he could be buried by history just like Hoover...
George Nash, the Hoover biographer who has trudged a lonely path through the scorned archives of that President, makes a couple of tentative observations in these strange days. Some forces in this world, he notes, cannot be stopped by politicians. And would it not be the ultimate irony if out of our worry now comes more study of and more respect for Herbert Hoover...