Roger, thanks for the clarification on Jackson and Van Buren. I went back and did some more research and verified what you wrote, along with learning a few more details. Apparently Van Buren was a party hack who worked for the good of the then-new Democratic Party instead of the good of the nation.
Ann wrote in reference to Franklin Roosevelt:
I feel that I'm looking at a good and dedicated person, the best kind of father figure, the sort of President who will not let his country down. And he will not let other countries down either.
That's largely why he was reelected in 1936. Despite a number of his social programs going down in flames and a real lack of progress on the international and national financial situation, he
looked like a President. He spoke like a President. So people voted him back in as President. It certainly wasn't because he was effective.
When campaigning in 1940, the unemployment rate - which had been around 25% during his first campaign in 1932 - was around 20%. Not much of an improvement. And there was a second sharp contraction of the money supply (meaning, another recession within the Depression) in 1938 which severely damaged the fragile recovery. Most economists today assign the responsibility for that recession to FDR and his policies, along with the responsibility for prolonging the Depression. Hoover, of course, gets the blame for initiating it.
Just because someone looks like a leader, it doesn't mean that person really is a leader. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, swims and waddles like a duck, it's probably a duck. But it may not be Presidential material. John Dillinger was, by all accounts, a friendly and personable man with classic good looks. But he was a murderer and a thief. Judging someone by his or her appearance is always dangerous.
Here's a thought. If Herbert Hoover had been the one with the charisma, FDR probably would be a footnote in history as the governor of New York who'd had polio. Then we'd have had more opportunities for announcers to call him "Hoobert Heever."
