MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
President Trump is increasingly confronting a question that has haunted other presidents - how a war that goes on longer than predicted can reshape a presidency. President Trump has acknowledged he's trying to avoid the pitfalls of one of his predecessors, Herbert Hoover, the Republican whose name became synonymous with the economic collapse of the Great Depression.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: So rather than possibly going into a depression, rather than having your favorite president be Herbert Hoover - that was always the one I didn't want to be.
KELLY: Those concerns were reflected when he signed the short-lived peace agreement with Iran in June - evidence, perhaps, that the president is thinking beyond military objectives and understanding he may ultimately be judged not by what happens in combat, but by how it affects inflation, gas prices and people's lives at home. NPR White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez reports.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TRUMP: Thank you.
(APPLAUSE)
FRANCO ORDOÑEZ, BYLINE: At the G7 summit in France, President Trump shared what has been a longstanding fear of being compared to Hoover, something he's raised repeatedly over the years.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TRUMP: And you know, I've studied presidents - some good, some bad, some great - not too many are great - and some really bad. We had one just recently. And 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?
ORDOÑEZ: Those comments were more than an offhand remark. Instead, they reveal his sensibilities of what it means to be a good president and how he hopes to be remembered by history.
TEVI TROY: I think that Trump often reveals what he's thinking in these comments he makes. They sound like asides, but I think they are indicative of his upbringing, and he grew up in a period where Herbert Hoover was a very negative thing to be.
ORDOÑEZ: Tevi Troy, a presidential historian and former White House aide to George W. Bush, says 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 that many saw as one of the worst political mistakes of the 20th century.
TROY: And he clearly does not want to be Herbert Hoover, and he's not the only Republican president who had that fear.
ORDOÑEZ: During the financial crisis of 2008, President George W. Bush urged Congress to approve his plan to stabilize the financial markets, arguing that it was better to take action or risk being compared to Herbert Hoover. Ronald Reagan also faced Hoover comparisons during the recession of 1981 and 1982 but escaped that association when the economy rebounded.
TROY: Any Republican president who gets hit with bad economic times faces the danger of being tagged as Herbert Hoover. You don't really hear people saying that Jimmy Carter was Herbert Hoover, even though he had a poor economic record and the economy wasn't doing well. It's constantly something that happens to Republican presidents, not Democrats.
ORDOÑEZ: For Trump, the concern is more urgent as the war in Iran takes its toll on energy markets and inflation.
DIANE SWONK: First of all, you know, risks of recession are higher today than they were prior to the war.
ORDOÑEZ: Diane Swonk, chief economist at the accounting firm KPMG, says the risks are not off the charts but that the concern grows higher the longer that inflation persists, and the Federal Reserve leaves it unaddressed. Still, she cautions again treating today's economy as a replay of Hoover's experience, noting the economy was much different then and that there are better tools today to prevent such a catastrophe.
SWONK: It's hard to get back to a Hoover-type situation. There were so many policy mistakes made back then that caused that situation and how it played out.
ORDOÑEZ: 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. Franco Ordoñez, NPR News, the White House.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.