Haunted by Hoover, Trump searches for an endgame in Iran

US President Donald Trump arrives to participate in a roundtable on the American mining industry at the US Department of State in Washington, DC. KENT NISHIMURA/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

President Trump is confronting a question that has haunted presidents throughout history: how a war — one that has gone on longer than predicted — can reshape a presidency.

Behind the scenes and in public remarks, Trump has acknowledged seeking an agreement to end the Iran war in hopes of escaping comparisons to former President Herbert Hoover, the Republican whose name became synonymous with economic collapse after the Great Depression.

"I've studied presidents, some good, some bad, some great," he said at the June G7 summit in France. "Not too many are great and some really bad. We had one just recently. The one president I did not want to be was the late, great Herbert Hoover. I didn't want that and who knows what would have happened. But bad things happen."

Those remarks were more than an offhand remark. They reveal his sensibilities of what it means to be a good president and how he hopes to be remembered by history. It's recognition that he may be judged not only by what happens on the battlefield, but by the impacts on inflation, gas prices and voters' lives at home.

Historic parallels

Trump, born in 1946, grew up during a time when Hoover served as a cautionary example of what not to do during difficult economic times.

Hoover stuck to his Republican principles that the government shouldn't meddle in the economy — a decision many saw as one of the worst political mistakes of the 20th century.

"Trump often reveals what he's thinking with these comments he makes," said Tevi Troy, a presidential historian and former White House aide to George W. Bush. "They sound like asides, but I think they're indicative of his upbringing. He grew up in a period where Herbert Hoover was a very negative thing to be."

Trump is not the only Republican to face those fears.

During the financial crisis of 2008, President George W. Bush raised his own concerns in an Oval Office meeting congressional leaders urging them to approve his plan to stabilize the financial markets. Bush argued that it was better to take action — or risk being compared to Herbert Hoover.

"We're going to act. I'm not going to be Herbert Hoover," Bush told the leaders, presidential historian Russell Riley wrote in his book Inside the George W. Bush White House: An Oral History .

Ronald Reagan also faced Hoover comparisons during the recession of 1981 and 1982, but escaped the association when the economy rebounded.

"Any Republican president who gets hit with bad economic times faces the danger of being tagged as Herbert Hoover," Troy said. "You don't really hear people saying Jimmy Carter was Herbert Hoover. It's constantly something that happens to Republican presidents."

Urgent concerns

For Trump, that concern is more urgent as the war takes its toll on energy and inflation.

The risks of recession are higher today than they were prior to the war, but they're also not off the charts, according to Diane Swonk, chief economist at the accounting firm KPMG. But she said the risks get higher the longer that inflation persists and the Fed leaves it unaddressed, noting that inflation has persisted for five years.

Still, she cautioned against treating today's economy as a replay of Hoover's experience — noting the economy was much different then and there are much better tools today to prevent such a catastrophe.

"It's hard to get back to a Hoover-type situation where there are all these Hoovervilles," she said. "There were so many policy mistakes made back then that caused that situation and how it played out."

But the president has long understood that his political success may be defined by the performance of the economy – and he knows that a prolonged war can often reshape a presidency in unexpected ways.