Herbert Hoover's campaign motto for the 1928
Presidential Election. In a time of prosperity unlike any seen before, he campaigned on a platform of
eternal prosperity and the idea that
a rising tide lifts all boats. Between this, his support for continuing
Prohibition and claiming that his opponent,
Alfred Smith, would make
Catholicism the national religion
Hoover won by a
landslide.
Less than a year after Hoover was elected, the stock market tanked, and a year after FDR beat him handily in the '32 election, Prohibition was repealed. Despite his desire to be associated with the great times of the 20's, he was reviled (not so much for the Great Depression as for his ineffective solutions and perceived lack of empathy) during his administration to the extent that the shanty towns that sprung up to house the destitute were named after him. Given the proximity of the crash to his election, it's probably not fair to blame him completely, there being plenty of blame to be handed out to Wall Street, stock manipulators, speculators, the nouveau riche, Congress, the Senate, Calvin Coolidge, etc etc.