Word: hooverness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...record suggests there are some things a President can do to boost his long-term value. Of all his predecessors, Bush may have the most to learn from Herbert Hoover, the one to whom, given the current Great Recession, he is increasingly compared. Bush may not be popular, but there aren't crowds calling for him to be hanged or accusing him of raiding Fort Knox before fleeing the country. Hoover left office in an even deeper hole than Bush does, but he had the great advantage of a strong constitution. He lived another 31 years, during which time...
...always felt politics would be just a chapter of my life, not my life," Bush told me. He may be content to leave his legacy to history, but if Hoover, Carter and his father are any guides, using his platform to do great and lasting good for a cause he cares about may do as much for his image as any future historian with a polishing cloth...
...Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, a two-volume set that is still considered one of the best presidential memoirs ever penned. In 1913, Theodore Roosevelt wrote another well-regarded tome (predictably, and straightforwardly, titled Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography). Harry Truman wrote his memoirs because he was broke, Herbert Hoover produced his in an attempt to improve his Depression-tarnished image, and it's been sort of downhill ever since, culminating in Bill Clinton's 1,000-plus page apologia My Life. (See pictures of Presidents giving State of the Union addresses...
Carter and Clinton aren't the first ex-presidents to take an interest in the greater good. Rutherford B. Hayes became president of the National Prison Association after taking notice of the atrocious living conditions most imprisoned Americans endured. Herbert Hoover, reviled for years because of his contribution to the Great Depression, earned a second chance when Harry Truman asked him to head the Famine Emergency Commission - responsible for distributing food to nations devastated by World War II - and another commission tasked with reorganizing the government and eliminating waste. President Carter, of course, established the Carter Center, devoted to supporting...
...stimulus on an unprecedented scale. Obama's tacit collaboration with an unpopular predecessor offers the strongest evidence yet of his sincerity in wanting to change the brutish tone of official Washington. It's a safe bet his ride to Capitol Hill will be far more civil than the ghastly Hoover-Roosevelt procession. And that's change we can all believe...