Would Herbert Hoover been a Centrist Democrat today?

[Armstead]

There was an interesting biography of Herbert Hoover on PBS last nite.

Rather than the caricature of him as a dopey do-nothing conservative, the biography pointed out that he was actually a basically decent with a long list of accomplishments.

But when the sh*t hit the fan economically he screwed up by falling back on the conservative notions that the government should have a limited role in any recovery, and that it should be left to individuals and private enterprise. He actually did take a few progressive steps -- public works, etc. -- but he lacked the imagination or will to actually take steps to address the suffering of the population or to actually restructure the excesses and inequities of the economy that had led to the crash.

It makes one wonder, listening to our Democratic leadership asking Big Business and Wall Street to please "be Nice" while giving them big gifts (bailouts, mandated insurance) and avoiding stepping on the toes of the fat cats with real reform or regulation.

We associate Hoover with the conservative movement. But...Was Herbert Hoover the real father of centrist Democrats? Was his lack of imagination and rejection of liberal or progressive action a template for the DLC Centrists and other ConservaDems of today?

[NewJeffCT]

1. Nixon is more liberal than some of today's Blue Dogs

Wasn't his public option for insurance more progressive than what we're going to get now? Plus, he started a few federal agencies that likely would not have been able to be started in today's more conservative atmosphere.

[Armstead]

2. Yep...Nkixon agreed to sign the bill creating the EPA and pushed for it to have real clout

I suspect today's Centrist Democrats would have been afraid to propose such a thing as "too liberal."

[Fumesucker]

3. Nixon was very much a mixed bag, but yeah.. By today's standards he would be a liberal..

[Bill McBlueState]

4. you might find this article from Harper's interesting

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/07/0082562

"Barack Hoover Obama: The best and the brightest blow it again"

[Armstead]

6. Very gfood article...

Lot of food for thought/ Would include it in the OP if I could.
Excerpt:

...We are back in Evan Bayh territory here, espousing a “pragmatism” that is not really pragmatism at all, just surrender to the usual corporate interests. The common thread running through all of Obama’s major proposals right now is that they are labyrinthine solutions designed mainly to avoid conflict. The bank bailout, cap-and-trade on carbon emissions, health-care pools—all of these ideas are, like Hillary Clinton’s ill-fated 1993 health plan, simultaneously too complicated to draw a constituency and too threatening for Congress to shape and pass as Obama would like. They bear the seeds of their own defeat.

Obama will have to directly attack the fortified bastions of the newest “new class”—the makers of the paper economy in which he came of age—if he is to accomplish anything. These interests did not spend fifty years shipping the greatest industrial economy in the history of the world overseas only to be challenged by a newly empowered, green-economy working class. They did not spend much of the past two decades gobbling up previously public sectors such as health care, education, and transportation only to have to compete with a reinvigorated public sector. They mean, even now, to use the bailout to make the government their helpless junior partner, and if they can they will devour every federal dollar available to recoup their own losses, and thereby preclude the use of any monies for the rest of Barack Obama’s splendid vision....

[Ozymanithrax]

5. Buckley, Wallace, and Reagan changed the nature of Conservativism...

So no Republican or Democrat before Reagan, or modern Conservativism as defined by Buckley, would be considered a Conservtive now.

Hoover was a typical big bussiness conservative. But that meant something a bit different when he was President as it did when Eisenhower and Nixon were Presidents. It continued to mean something different until Reagan.

[johnaries]

7. Would Centrist Democrats order the Army to assault veterans?

Google "Bonus March" if you don't know what I'm talking about.

[OHdem10]

8. No, Rock Ribbed Republican