Monday, January 25, 2016

Is Trump the 21st Century Hoover?

If you read Amity Schlaes's The Forgotten Man you will learn about Herbert Hoover the great engineer and business manager. His penchant for micromanagement (duplicated by FDR) fed many of the problems worsening the Great Depression. Hoover came to office on the heals of his unambiguously great success in helping Europe recover from WWI.

Now Trump seeks office with a smimilar resume and goal. He wants to manage the bureaucracy better.

Does that make Trump the second term of Herbert Hoover?

Hoover came to regret his presidency and sought to teach others how to avoid his errors through the great Hoover Institute at Stanford.

If Trump learns the right lessons, he could lead better than Hoover without the notion of managing the economy to health. He could manage the bureaucracy to empower law and order and self sufficiency.

If Trump repeats Hoover's errors, he would be arguably Obama's third term.

I don't trust Trump. He's philosophically unmoored. He is clearly a great student of human nature and organizational management and motivation. So was Hoover.

Hoover was a poor student of economics at a national scale. He learned that too late.

If Trump learns the power of Harding, Coolidge, and Reagan in managing the economy, then his managerial skills could make Trump extraordinary in office.

If Trump's lack of learning of philosophical lessons were to hold true, he could be more damaging than Hoover. 

Trump has the big personality of Harding, who slashed the government budget in half on entering office and set off a huge economic era. While history treats Harding as corrupt, little evidence suggests this playboy was corrupt, just egotistic. I doubt Trump would have the real courage to cut the budget like Harding, so I pass on the subject. 

 Hoover is an object lesson for Trump. What lesson will he take?