Hoover arguably belongs on the Lincoln/Eisenhower side of the equation, despite the assumptions that scattershot readings of history make about him. He was an engineer and a product of the Industrial Revolution and the Machine Age. He saw society as one big factory and all of its citizens and institutions as its moving parts - solving public policy problems was no different than trying to make an assembly line run more smoothly. On one hand, it's optimistically liberal - it opens the door for central planning and reliance on experts over the collective decision making of market actors. On the other hand, it's unsympathetically conservative - it can give rise to a cold, managerial "run government like a business" mentality. But the fact that Hoover believed government could work well and be a positive force in society is what precludes him from being lumped in with the Tea Party.
Hoover was simply ill-suited to be President. He demonstrates that profit-and-loss experience is irrelevant to government, much of which (like justice and law enforcement) could never operate on a profit-and-loss basis.
The economic meltdowns beginning in 2007 and 1929 had much the same cause and did similar damage for about a year and a half. The difference? In 2009 Barack Obama backed the banks at the start of his term. In 1931, Herbert Hoover let the bank runs that would eventually shred the financial system 'sort things out'. That sorting-out undid about 25 years of economic progress. That is how business mangers see things in macroeconomics.
The Tea Party pols are cruel. Put them fully in charge, and they would give us a full-blown Depression.
Are you suggesting if the bust happened a year earlier, things could have gotten as bad as they did in the Great Depression? I suspect that may have been the case.
