As far back as August of 2002, United Press International began "Hissing the H word at Bush," as UPI put it. Hillary Clinton said in April 2003 that Bush had "the most wrongheaded economic policies since Herbert Hoover." The New York Times proclaimed in July 2003 that President Bush "finds himself in danger of becoming the first president since Hoover to oversee a decline in the country's employment." MoveOn.org began running ads comparing Bush to Hoover in November 2003, before they compared him to Hitler instead. The Associate Press (AP) "reported" in February 2004 that President Bush had "the worst job-creation record of any president since Herbert Hoover." "Kerry Campaign Chairwoman Jeanne Shaheen awarded George Bush the 'Herbert Hoover Award' for presiding over the worst record on jobs of any president in American history" in March 2004. Washington Post pundits gleefully fuel "the fear that Bush will be the first president since Herbert Hoover to see jobs decline during his term." Every Democratic "strategist" interviewed for every media outlet inevitably compares President Bush to poor beleaguered Herbert Hoover, as do most so-called "news" stories. And now John Kerry, unimaginatively trying to come up with a new attack on President Bush, tells us that "George Bush is the first president since Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression to actually lose jobs."

Well, we've heard this before. And it's never been true. The Democrats used the same rhetoric against the first President Bush, for those who don't remember. US News and World Report called him "George Herbert (Hoover) Bush" in January 1992. In 1988, on the other hand, the Libertarian-leaning Mises Institute attacked Ronald Reagan's policies as "the most protectionist since Herbert Hoover's."

Poor Herbert Hoover. He just can't win. USA Today pointed out the excessive abuse of former President Hoover back in March of 2004, pointing out the fact that the Democrats have been digging into the same tired bag of tricks since 1948.

"They've dug up poor Mr. Hoover again and tried to turn him into the boogeyman of the campaign," said Tim Walch, director of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum. Both are in sight of Hoover's birthplace and the hill on which the 31st president is buried.

"It's really irrelevant to what's happening, and people can't get over it," said West Branch Mayor Mike Quinlan, a Democrat. "Hoover would have shown more class and never would have bashed a Democrat — but it's easy to do that."

Admirers defend the Hoover administration and point out that the former president became one of the great humanitarians of the 20th century with his efforts to stop world hunger.

Democrats have evoked the image of Hoover off and on since his defeat by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, the political victim of a stock-market crash and the Great Depression. But Walch said there hasn't been such a coordinated, partywide effort to link Hoover with a Republican candidate since Harry Truman's desperate campaign in 1948.

Walch noted another reason Democrats should be careful. Hoover was criticized for raising taxes on the wealthy and embracing a protectionist trade policy, both of which many Democrats support today.

The problem with comparing Bush and Hoover is that it makes no logical sense -- not that THAT will stop the Democrats (it's an election year, after all). For the moment, we'll ignore the fact that the private sector creates the majority of jobs in a functioning capitalistic society, not the government -- if the government is creating your jobs, you have a serious problem. The unemployment rate is down to 5.4%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics report for August 2004. A look at the historical data shows the unemployment level has often been far higher than it is now, higher than the worst part of the recent recession, when it reached 6.4% in June 2003. During Herbert Hoover's administration, the unemployment rate rose to a high of 23.6%. What the Democrats won't tell you is that the Great Depression unemployment rate actually peaked at 24.9% in 1933... a year after the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. If they agreed that the 1933 job losses were due to the residual effects of Herbert Hoover's presidency, they would have to admit that the recession of 2000-2001 was actually due to Bill Clinton's administration. As it is, they're trying as hard as possible to ignore the jobs lost as a direct result of 9/11 -- which had devastating economic impacts -- and the discovery of the corporate scandals that went undetected all through the 1990's.

The Democrats are busy spinning the economy every which way but true, with the eager help of their friends in the media. Instead of reporting the total number of jobs created every month, the media focuses like a laser beam on major corporate jobs -- the Payroll Survey from the BLS. In July, for instance, the Payroll survey showed that only 32,000 jobs had been created by large, established corporations (a figure that has since been upgraded to 73,000). As National Review Online noted after checking with the BLS: "Real-estate agents, general contractors, and self-employed professionals such as lawyers, accountants, and financial planners just aren’t part of this number." The Household survey -- which records small businesses, startups and the self-employed -- showed that a startling total of 629,000 new jobs were actually created during that month. Where were the nightly news lead-off stories? Where were the headlines? (Where, for that matter, were the Bush campaign spokespeople, who should have been waving this figure like a flag during every interview and in paid ads?) As for the Democrat mantra that the jobs being created are low-paying, hard data from the August 2004 BLS report once again refutes the charge. "Average weekly earnings increased by 0.3 percent over the month to $533.03. Over the year, average hourly earnings increased by 2.3 percent, and average weekly earnings grew by 2.9 percent." Those pesky facts will get you every time.

With the GDP increasing for the last 11 quarters in a row, and while job creation has been positive every month since September 2003, all the Kerry campaign needs to sell their doom-and-gloom message is for no one to pay attention. Instead of "abracadabra" or "hocus-pocus," the Democratic stage magicians hope to misdirect you, distracting you with some flashpowder and the new magic words, "Herbert Hoover!"