Hoover Was Brilliant. Here's What Did Him In

The October 1929 Wall Street collapse had left the American economy in ruins. After prolonged but ineffective optimism at the White House and robust debate on whether to tax imports to protect American farmers and manufacturers, on July 17, 1930, President Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley tariff bill. More than 1,000 economists had petitioned Hoover not to do so, as had the greatest industrialist of the age, Henry Ford—in person—and sages from the world of finance. “I almost went down on my knees to beg Herbert Hoover to veto the asinine Smoot-Hawley Tariff,” Thomas Lamont, a partner at J.P. Morgan, said later. “That act intensified nationalism all over the world.” Current wisdom holds that Smoot-Hawley may have put the “great” in the Great Depression, exporting Wall Street’s woes globally, and raising the question of why one of the most intelligent men ever elected president of the United States made so colossal a blunder.