How to Fight Presidents: Defending Yourself Against the Badasses Who Ran This Country (26 page)

Be careful.

If you were looking for a good reason to fear thirty-first president Herbert Hoover, you came to the right place (for this information, and absolutely nothing else). Hoover isn’t afraid to die, because he’s already died once before, and decided that it wasn’t so bad. When Hoover was two, his parents thought he was dead. To be clear, it’s not like he was sleeping and they thought he was dead for a few seconds before they woke him up. They found him unresponsive and motionless, suffering through a nasty bout of croup, so they put pennies over his eyes and covered him up with a sheet, as was the custom at the time when people died, and then they pronounced him dead (as is
still
the custom when people die).

He survived, obviously, and he held on to those survival skills. When his father died two years later, Hoover carried on, and when his mother died a few years after that, leaving Hoover as an orphan at nine years old, he just kept surviving. With no parents to either raise
or protect him, Hoover quickly fell in with a gang of young Native American boys who taught him how to hunt, use a bow and arrow, and generally survive anywhere in the wild. Two years later, he was sent to live with an uncle in Oregon who raised the young Hoover with slightly edited passages from the Bible. “Turn your cheek,” Hoover’s uncle instructed, “but if he smites you again then punch him.” (For any non–Bible scholars wondering which part wasn’t in the Bible, it was the “punch your enemies” part.)

So what happens to a boy whose parents first leave him for dead and then just straight-up leave him? He grows up to be the most self-reliant president we’ve ever had. He was focused, efficient, and fearless, and expected as much from everyone he encountered, and if they
didn’t
match his expectations, he’d leave them behind.

Hoover lived by a simple motto: “Work is life.” Hoover never sought power, he just liked to work hard and do good in the world. After earning his way through college via various odd jobs, he landed a position with a gold mining company that led to great fortunes. Once he’d turned some money into lots of money and then lots of money into a
crapload
of money, the way all rich people do, Hoover turned his focus to humanitarian efforts, distributing food and supplies to American troops during World War I.

Having national attention for his humanitarian efforts, Hoover was tasked with meeting with German commanders in the middle of the war to negotiate the bringing of aid to American troops held prisoner behind enemy lines. As is customary with the people who manage but don’t actually fight wars, Hoover, his associates, and the German commanders met in a comfortable room and sipped martini after martini while discussing, you know, all of those human lives.

Here’s where Hoover gets less infuriating and much cannier. He wasn’t going to take a break to have a drink
even when he was supposed to be drinking
. He gave his American associates and the bartender strict orders: no matter what the Germans did, the Americans were going to keep their wits about them. The bartender was instructed to pour only
water
in the American martinis, and save the gin for the Germans. Hoover couldn’t just trust the bartender to know which
drink was which; he needed a way to distinguish his drinks from the Germans’, so he demanded that all of the American drinks be served with an onion garnish (instead of the traditional olive). To avoid suspicion, he assured the Germans that this was simply how Americans took their martinis (though the obvious truth is that he wanted to make sure no German accidentally grabbed the wrong drink, exposing the whole ruse).

The plan worked. The Americans kept their heads about them and negotiated brilliantly, while the Germans got sloppier and sloppier, giving the American negotiators the advantage. As a weird epilogue, the bullshit drink that Hoover threw together on the spot to deceive the Germans actually caught on in America. The Gibson martini (named after the general who accompanied Hoover) is one of our more popular gin drinks. Talk about efficiency. Hoover was so efficient that, even with lives on the line, he decides, “I know I’m only doing this to help my scheme, but I might as well make a dynamite drink and immortalize my friend in the process. Ol’ ‘Two Birds Hoover,’ that’s what they’ll call me.”

(No one ever would.)

Hoover continued his humanitarian work, even making sure to give aid to starving Europeans after the war, and when Calvin Coolidge announced that he wouldn’t run for office in the 1928 election, Hoover threw his hat in the ring. It wasn’t that he grew up dreaming to be the president; it just seemed like a job that would allow him to do the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people. Hoover’s stellar reputation ensured an easy, landslide victory. Pretty good win for a guy who died at two.

Hoover wasn’t our greatest president, but he was certainly one of our most driven. He rarely took vacations, and any time he wasn’t working he was antsy and uncomfortable, distracted by the amount of work that he could and should be getting done. He avoided trips and most hobbies, and it was said that he would eat his entire four-course dinners in eight minutes. It’s normal for a president to skip a vacation here or there, but Hoover trained himself to wolf down food as efficiently as possible just so he had
more
time to work.

Hoover did enjoy
some
diversions. Every morning, he would wake up and play a spirited game of “Hooverball.” Hooverball is similar to volleyball, except instead of hitting the ball back and forth, players stand on opposite sides of a tall net throwing and catching a ball, and instead of using a soft, bouncy volleyball, they used a ten-pound medicine ball. Hoover would hurl a ten-pound ball at his friends and then either catch or get hit by that same ball when they threw it back. A close friend of the president described it as “more strenuous than either boxing, wrestling, or football,” and Hoover played it every single morning.

Despite how beloved and effective he was before his presidency, nothing was going to help Hoover once he took office. Almost immediately after he stepped into the White House, the stock market crashed and he made wrong decision after wrong decision, leading us into the Great Depression. He lost reelection to FDR, and even though he spent the rest of his life committed to public service, nothing would change the fact that, in a lot of minds, Hoover was personally responsible for the Great Depression.

The takeaway from
all
of this is that Herbert Hoover is a survivor. He rose from the fake dead at two years old and never looked back. He started with nothing and became a self-made millionaire in no time, and then parlayed that success into the presidency, being the first man to become president without serving in the military or holding public office, just on the strength of his character. He worked every minute of every day without tiring and wasn’t sick for a single day of his presidency. He lived for more years after his presidency than any other president in history at the time, and he gave speeches, formed committees, and wrote books right up to his death.

Just because the country fell apart on his watch doesn’t mean Hoover’s a pushover. The man is
tough
. You won’t win your fight on strength or smarts, but simply by
overwhelming
him. Hurl a rock at him while spitting and screaming insults and charging him as fast as you can. One at a time, Hoover can handle almost anything, but throw a number of problems at him and the man crumbles.