What if Hoover Was President Earlier? 

Suggestion: What if the U.S. joined the League Of Nations after World War 1 ended?

W

So are you gonna do what if Germany became communist instead of fascist now?

Hey Cody. Was wondering if you could do a what if Japan was split in two between the Soviets and Allies. Or even better yet could you do another alternate history competition.

WHAT IF JFK and MLK were not assassinated. 1 timeline. What if Teddy Roosevelt had a 3rd term. And What what if trump ran in 2004 and 2008.

I thought it was named after a hoover vacuum

do you think herbert hoover had a thing for horses hooves

Hoover’s Russian famine relief was also a big part of his legacy overseas but it was before he became president so its not a presidential thing. He basically saved Bolshevik controlled Russia from collapsing but he also saved millions of people from certain death.

Imao that’s funny

I read the first part of the comment and I legit thought it was going to be one of those stupid-ass "as a _____ I can ___" comments

Ironically, given his later reputation as too conservative during the Depression, the Republican bosses thought Hoover was too progressive and nominated Harding because he was a conservative that stayed out of the ideological struggle in the Party. Harding named Hoover as his Secretary of Commerce and he was confirmed, Coolidge kept him on after Harding died, and he ran and won in 1928. At the worst possible time to be President.

This is why I suggested that Cody make this video.

@@iammrbeat Loved your eisenhower video

It was a good thing that Harding was nominated. Harding, contrary to historical opinion was an incredibly accomplished and great president. The main reason why people think he was bad was because of corruption. But the thing is, Harding himself was never corrupt, and it was his Cabinet, who was. And the rest of his Cabinet was great, with people like Herbert Hoover (ironic) and Charles Evans Hughes being given roles. To blame a man for others corruption which hardly impacted the every day American is weird. People forgive Ulysses Grant for his Cabinet's corruption, but for whatever reason, they dont for Harding. As for Hoover, Hoover was president at a great time, but because of his economic mismanagement, a recession became the Great Depression. Even a month after the Stock Market Crash, unemployment was still at 3.2%. Blocking free trade with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, raising taxes with the Revenue Act, and restricting the free market with infrastructure projects in a way that the New Deal did as well will contribute a lot to making a recession or mild depression, a Great Depression. Had Hoover actually been a conservative like Harding, he would have cut taxes, and allowed the economy to flourish. Harding came into office with a depression, but left with the Roaring 20s as he cut the budget, cut taxes, and paid off national debt. There is a reason you dont hear about the Recession of 1926-1927, Depression of 1920-1921, and the Recession of 1945-1946, and that reason is the government cut taxes and its budget, and so the economy recovered. As I said before, Harding was a great president, with many accomplishments: 1. Ended the Wilsonian recession (1920-1921 recession) 2. Released political prisoners that got imprisoned under Woodrow Wilson 3. He pulled the country out of Woodrow Wilson’s politics 5. Opposed US intervention in Latin America 6. The roaring 20s began under him, with the economy growing 16% from 1921 to 1922. By his last year in office, unemployment reached a low of 2%. Manufacturing workers received an all time high paycheck of $22 a week 7. Implemented programs to help poor mothers which reduced infant mortality rates and deaths from child birth 8. Helped implement the 8 hour work day in the steel mills industry 9. Washington Naval Agreement, reducing the size of navies across the world to push for a better and less militant future 10. Dawes Plan 11. President Harding signed a peace treaty with Austria and Germany post World War 1. 12. Formally ended WW1 14. Signed the Sweet Act, which created the Veteran’s Bureau by combining several bureaucratic agencies and neatly combining them into one singular agency 15. Introduced the Federal Highway Act of 1921, improving national standards for roads by providing federal aid to states 16. Budget and Accounting Act, setting up the national budget system, and an audit of that system to reduce corruption 17. Capper-Volstead Act, aiding farmers from being unfairly attacked by anti trust laws which did not make sense in the realm of farming 19. Packers and Stockyards Act, prohibiting unfair practices, dividing supply, manipulating prices, and enacted monopolies in the meatpacking, livestock, and poultry industries 20. Reduced national debt and balanced the budget 21. Allowing Herbert Hoover to run the American Relief Administration, which saved over 10.5 million people from starvation, and provided medicine to millions. He signed the Russian Famine Relief Act which further helped this cause 22. Withdrew troops from Cuba and Germany 23. Put an end to the occupation of the Dominican Republic, ending an unjust occupation which had occurred because the US wanted more control over the country’s economy 24. Attempted to make lynching illegal, and was in support of expanding voting rights 25. Improving relations with Canada, by being the first sitting American president to tour and give a speech there 26. Narcotic Drugs Import and Export Act, further restricting the import and export of harmful drugs 27. Patent Act of 1922, informing the nation about how to establish their own patents 28. Established the Pipe Spring National Monument in Arizona 29. Per capita income increased 30. Harding's administration made U.S. banking more competitive internationally. It helped rebuild Europe after World War I. Harding established an open-door trading policy in Asia and negotiated trade deals with Malaysia and the Middle East 31. Suicide rate declined 32. Labor unrest declined 33. Racial unrest declined 34. Signed an executive order to transfer the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to the Library of Congress, which eventually led Congress to create an exhibit for it. It was the first time the documents had been placed in an exhibit, allowing the public to view the documents for the first time in history 35. Extremely popular president

@@person3070 thank you so much for taking the time to write this and post it! These people have no idea!

And we have the current version of those 2: Joe Biden Only he'll probably die sometime in the 2030s and I sure hope that like Hoover and Carter, he's a one termer.

And got replaced by Presidents that people either hate or love too. Never knew Hoover lived so long. Surprising a President from 1976 is still alive today.

They say that history doesnt repeat, but it does rhyme

@@TheLouisianan I dont think FDR was as controversial as Reagan. I think the term "strong" or something like that would be better

Nah. Nixon directly created the energy crisis of 1973-1983 because of his slavish devotion to Israel. Sound familiar? Because every single one of our Presidents have done the same thing since the end of WW2.

Makes sense because King Leopold killed over 15 Million Africans or so

He used to be hated. Now, no one knows who he was.

Hoover is known as the Great Humanitarian as he saved millions of Soviets from starvation after WWI. But he's remembered for helping other countries and for neglecting his own.

That’ll be the second president that’s more popular in a foreign country than back at home.

Presidents weren’t forced to stop running but Washington’s two terms had been a form of an unspoken rule

Arizona: "We have a town and a dam named Coolidge" Descendents: "We have a song called Coolidge! But it's not about Calvin at all"

That one scholarship that forces you to read his autobiography

@@PBSpiralGamer which one?

My favorite thing about Calvin Coolidge is that, when he died, Alice Roosevelt was quoted as saying, "...How can you tell?"

@@Web720 RU-vid keeps deleting the comment, probably because of the link. If you look up "calvin coolidge scholarship" it should be the first search result

@here is the full clip bruh

Is your fursona evil, or is he a good guy who happens to have glowing red eyes? Also, who did the picture of him? It's pretty well done!

@@Roketsune EmperorTigerstar isn't a furry. Fun thing, though, he took the "Tigerstar" part of his name from a character from the _Warriors_ books series. Additionally, his avatar is visually modelled on Tigerstar, but wearing a Pickelhaube and a fancy Waffenrock/tunic.

How do you know he isn't furry? Also, it seems counter-intuitive that someone would adopt a furry persona but not be a furry. I just took a perfunctory look at the novels you cited. It's furry. He either is a furry of some sort or he is in denial.

@@Roketsune because I don’t consider myself one. He’s not a fursona he’s my channel’s mascot.

I was thinking the same thing, I hope Cody does a follow up video about FDR having to deal with a two term limit.

Or by inspiring the 22nd amendment early eliminates the option for FDR to run a 3rd term.

Would like to point out, the two-term limit only was ratified in 1951 - 6 years into Truman's presidency and had an exception for Truman as the incumbent. It is entirely possible for a two-term limit to pass because of a three-term Hoover presidency and Roosevelt still serve four terms, although the public may have been more hesitant to elect him

Fr, if the worst thing about him was some stomping on workers and not liking immigrants, he’s basically an early 20th century saint 😂

@@warlordofbritannia didn’t cody literally talk about how his policies worsened the depression and was a part of Lily White?

The worst thing about him is the CIA, we're still paying for that one.

@@warlordofbritannia I mean Saladin was a Saint for his time but did some very morally questionable stuff too, like Killing Prisoners and enslaved a few people but appart from that was very Chill.

@@collin1061 yup but as a person for the time he was all right, not by our time for sure and by All Right guy Cody ment on a personal level. (You can be a Saint of a leader but can be bad because you are either incompetent or not effective or both)

How despicable 😂

Well he’s not going to see it

Fantastic essay on Calvin Coolidge. This convinced me to take a closer look at the “lame duck” presidents and really consider the good they have done. Every President has at least done 1 good thing.

@@TheRoyrule I fully agree, and thanks. Along with Coolidge, some of the other lesser known presidents I recommend you looking up are John Quincy Adams, James K. Polk, James A. Garfield, and William McKinley. All great people that did great things, but unfortunately have either been forgotten to time or were overshadowed by a successor (or in the case of Garfield, he died too soon in office. Still, he’s a very interesting person who did some great things prior to becoming president. There’s a reason he was so popular among the Republican Party and why he beat Ulysses S. Grant in the Republican nomination in the 1880 election).

Based cool Cal.

Can't say i agree with alot of His quotes, but seems Like a cool guy

@@enderkatze6129 hmmmm, now I’m kinda curious. What is it about his quotes that you dislike or disagree with?

I was wa5tching another video last night about just that. It pointed out that with a lot of FDR's New Deal, the foundations were really set by Hoover in the first place. I guess it was just a case of FDR and the Dems gussying them up to look better and their own idea. (Yet another video I saw on FDR suggested that he pretty much redefined with 'liberal' meant, so it was more palatable to the American voter.)

Yeah, it annoys me when Hoover is pointed to as a reason why laissez faire doesn’t work during a depression when he pretty much did the complete opposite. With exception of lowering taxes, he pretty much did what any typical Keynesian would do. In his defence it would be very difficult to not do anything during a depression as a president, especially considering his charitable history.

If he didnt he would have been more hater

@@StetoGuy wasn't there a potential depression that was estimated to be worse than the great depression, but that almost immediately resolved itself because the guy in charge stuck to a purely laissez faire way of doing things? if we use the most accurate school of economics for predicting future changes in macroeconomics, the fact that hoover intervened in the economy more than he should have was exactly what caused things to get as bad as they did, and the fact that fdr intervened even more was what made it last so much longer, but i guess that's not what the modern reeducation institutes will have you believe.

Except Hoover didn’t do unconstitutional shit like putrid fdr

@here is the full clip you are the very thing you sought to make fun of

A-yo!!

History classes praise FDR despite being a scumbag who screwed up the economy even more.

I'm also not really sure it's fair to say that Smoot-Hawley wouldn't have happened if not for Hoover - he opposed it (though he supported higher tariffs on agricultural imports to help farmers). It's just that a lot of his party supported it, so it seems like any Republican president at that time would have faced a lot of pressure for protectionist policies.

The strange thing is many textbooks say that the Smoot-Hawley Tariff decreased the amount of American goods bought by foreign countries and this turned any chance of what would have been a maybe 4 year recession into the depression. It's in a roundabout way true due to the retaliatory tariffs. But if you don't look at the context and take it at face value, you might assume it was a tax on exports not a tax on imports.

Doesn't help that people are incorrectly taught that FDR handled the Great Depression well when it was coming to an end when Hoover left office but FDR's policies where so terrible the recovery came to an end and the Depression lasted an additional 15 years.

Hoover had Major Patton conduct a tank assault on the WWI Vets in Washington DC. Hoover earned his reputation.

@@ZontarDowunemployment wise yeah. Even by the end of the 30’s, unemployment was still over 10%.

@@Edax_Royeaux Of all of the things he did that was basically the only one which was actually bad.

@@ZontarDow Yeah the problem is that it's how he's remembered in the public consciousness given that the public saw Hoover as not doing anything due to an initial bootstrap policy, and then FDR came claiming to fix everything and then did things. Didn't matter that it hurt things more, just that he did something.

are you the real brain griffin -burger40

The logical extreme of "right guy, wrong time."

The opposite of Winston Churchill you could say

@@michaelvanhout7614 Pretty much.

@@michaelvanhout7614 Winston Churchill ensured that the united kingdom left the war heavily in debt and it's colonies closer to breaking free than ever.

@@rance2799 If Churchill didn’t stand up and Britain left the war, the nazis would likely end up controlling the entire European mainland. No lend lease for USSR, no German forces tied up in North Africa, no bombardments on her weapon industry and most of all oil shipments could arrive from overseas, securing German oil reserves. The war would be even more destructive and deadly, even if the Soviet Union would eventually win. No matter who wins, the UK would find itself isolated in Europe as one of its last democracies. I can hardly believe this would be a better outcome for Britain. Furthermore, Britain’s financial situation was poor already before the war, the decay had already set in since WWI and the Great Depression. This war, at worst, only accelerated its dissolution.

Really? Where’d you get this info from?

@@ryanelliott71698 Apparently the Republicans were considering Teddy as their choice, but he insisted that if he ran, the Republicans would run on a progressive platform, then he died in 1919. Saying Teddy Roosevelt was "supposed" to be the compromise is kind of exaggerated, but it could've happened.

@@ryanelliott71698The books title is actually 1920: The Year of 6 President, which is my mistake. But Chapter 4 is all about how Teddy was lining up support from his former allies and even winning over conservative rivals as the best bet for 1920. It wasn't a sure thing, nothing is, but when you have the leaders of the Conservative wing of the Republican Party saying in 1918 things like this: “There is but one candidate for president,” he said matter-of-factly. “He is the only candidate. I mean Theodore Roosevelt.” - that's a good sign for that candidacy.

@@MrMike855 Yes, "supposed to" should be substituted with more of a "the frontrunner at the time was"

If he wasn't, I never would have gotten my usual online name.

Calvin Wholidge

keep cool with coolidge

Easily one of the top 5 presidents

I'm here for the Coolidge fan club.

Hoover was a worse president than Carter in my opinion.

Perhaps France and Russia shouldn’t have started the war.

​@@peterfireflylundI blame Austria hungary and Serbia

Three

@@YUVRAJSINGH-pz7zo Three what?

@@mytypamilkman Home Alone 3 2

@im sacred Get a life!

No his policies caused the depression and made it worse. I'm shocked the propganda from the Hoover institute has been so effective

​@@oleonard7319 The great depression was literally a global economic crisis with 50 trillion different causes, you can't just say some american president's policies after an economic boom made the world sag.

​​​@@user-jp8me2hf4oHoover was just the last in a line of increasingly laissez-faire U.S. presidents whose recent surge in popular support is entirely bizarre and not tied to reality in any way whatsoever. The U.S. economy was essentially the "big dog" after WWI, so its failure in 1929 would have drastic consequences for the rest of the global economy, and it's foolish to believe otherwise.

he just couldn’t bare the thought of using government money to fix a crippling depression. Oh well the goat FDR did it for him.

R B Bennett was also similar to Hoover because he was a former businessman who was popular enough to enter politics.

What's even more interesting about R.B. Bennett is that near the end of his term, he did a complete 180 on government intervention in the economy. He initially continued the laissez faire economic policies in Canada, but after seeing FDR implement the New Deal, he tried to do the same thing. Unfortunately for him, it was too late to save his job and he lost in a landslide to MacKenzie King in 1935. And much like what Hoover did to the Republicans, Bennett's policies dragged the Conservative Party down and they would not return to power until 1957 under John Diefenbaker.

They made tv mini-series about FDR not being president a few years ago; The Plot Against America

No, the business of America should be people.

Isn’t he the guy who thought it was a good idea to continue partying in the white house during the great depression to make everything look completely fine

@@thestrangecaseofharryhinde9473 Well... It's not completely idiotic to do so. Federal Reserve does something like that when they say that the USA isn't in a recession. When the government says there's a recession people will buy less so they can save money in case something bad happens. When people buy less the economy shrinks even more because there's not as much demand. Which can make people panic and spend less on everything - and the cycle continues. So it wouldn't be a bad idea (it costs very little to do so and it can help) if it was supported by government spending. You give people jobs in road construction and behave like everything is fine and the population thinks it actually is fine so they spend more and you avoid complete collapse, you still take a hit, but you aren't in as bad of a position as you would otherwise be.

@@thestrangecaseofharryhinde9473 i dont think anyone really parties at the white house let aloen during the depression

@@thestrangecaseofharryhinde9473 won’t be the first time or last time politicians do stuff like that sadly. Not saying he was the best president, but he’s certainly not the worst.

@@junfa8686 the difference is that it was policy i’m not saying that he was the worst president, i’m saying that he was a moron

Possible but unlikely considering Truman was excepted from the 22nd amendment as the incumbent. 6 Years passed between the start of his presidency and the ratification so four term Roosevelt is still likely even if a term limit is passed.

That’s completely untrue. Hoover was not a laissez faire capitalist and enacted overreaching intervention. The Great Depression was caused by too much interventionism. Hoover was basically a technocrat

@@night6724​​​Yeah I agree. A massive fact that nobody seems to ever mention was that during 20’s there was a massive expansion of the currency supply and artificial setting of low interest rates by the federal reserve which caused inflation and disrupted the currency market, encouraging people to spend erratically due to increased credit and it encouraged banks to give out more risky loans. This led to a miss allocation of resources and an artificial stimulus in spending, which when suddenly people start defaulting on their loans, the Great Depression happens. It’s not the business men, it’s the failure of the intervention of central banks which disrupted the equilibrium of the value of money and how much of it could be spent. Hoover very much continued and in fact expanded on interventionism. While yes he reduced taxes, he also spent a lot. Massive public works projects and high tariffs which just made the situation worse and prolonged the depression.

@@StetoGuy actually Hoover raised the top income tax from 28 percent to 70 percent

@@night6724 I think that he was interventionist in all the wrong ways. Instead of ramping public spending into overdrive and artificially creating a new new frontier for America to expand into again like FDR did he just kinda bumbled around and made very surface level changed to a system that was trying to kill itself.

@@emperorroach AKA you disagree with him

Hoover's policies caused the depression and made it worse

A lot of people have done takes on that

He's totally underrated. Shame he always flies under the radar.

@@Warui88 the hero we needed but never deserved

Shit, without FDR it's possible the US would have turned to fascism or communism if the depression got bad enough. That's where people were turning towards before FDR got elected.

I’d love to live in a world were FDR lost

@@goofyahhslimjackson1942 and with the someone else win 28,32 don't mean FDR couldn't somehow win 36.

@@Dratchev241 fair but his somewhat radical ideas (at least for the conservative times) would be less prevalent in a better or less worse economy. I guess it depends how bad the depression is

Genius I think Monsieur d did that but this guys better

@@goofyahhslimjackson1942 Anything is better than Monsieur Z

@@figtree_video_archive I don’t know about that but he is mid as heck pretty boring too

The Treaty of London may have had a lot to do with Italy joining the Entente.

As a Michigander I would also like to see this outcome.