Scratching the Hoover itch

I've done this before, but hey, I have economic-historical eczema. I just can't stop itching. Thomas Byrne asks why left wing hacks refer to 'Conservative economics' as 'Hooverite' (src). Byrne even gives a direct quote from Hoover's own autobiography where he points out that he was interventionist.

The answer to his question is simple: they don't know, and don't want to know, the history. Hoover was Harding's secretary of commerce, '21–'28; Harding was the president who nipped a recession in the bud, you may recall. Hoover served in the same post under Harding's Vice President, Coolidge, who ascended the office when Harding died in '23 of a heart attack, and went on to win the subsequent election on what must have been a similar economic platform to Harding's (see graph below). Eventually, Hoover won the presidency in '29. Watch what happened to government spending through the period:

(Src: Cato Institute, via Byrne.)

Of course, it is inconvenient to the left to acknowledge that Hoover actually increased government spending from the moment he stepped into the Oval Office. It is equally difficult for them to call the policy of cuts 'Hardingite', since Harding, for all his many flaws, did stop a recession in its tracks.

Hoover's policy, on the other hand, was such a roaring success that the depression spread around the world, and was only really checked by a war economy some ten years later. For those who are murmuring that a war economy is a massively State-driven economy, I would point out that a war economy involved intense restrictions on private consumption (not recommended by Keynesians) in order to increase the propensity to save (not recommended by Keynesians) and thus to cheapen credit for the State. Yes, it was State-driven, but in completely the other direction from the way a Keynesian would drive the economy towards recovery.

Let's face it, history is not on the side of the Keynesians. Even their favourite episode doesn't prove what they'd like it to prove, and the nearest incident of a government doing what they say we shouldn't do managed to stop a recession early on. Isn't it about time we learnt the lessons of history?