Hoover backs Dewey!(Tilting at Windmills) (Brief Article)

• Author: Peters, Charles

The Democrats could lose West Virginia again, argues Slate's William Salem. "West Virginians respect authority.... Democrats stick with the party of their fathers unless the GOP nominates an incumbent President." Saletan acknowledges one exception to this role in explaining George W. Bush's victory over Al Gore--"they trusted the King's son." However, he fails to mention another, Herbert Hoover. That Republican incumbent lost West Virginia to FDR in 1932.

What possible relevance does that have today, you ask? Hoover was so heartily disliked by West Virginians that for the next couple of decades, the Democratic Charleston Gazette would dispose of the current Republican presidential nominee by seizing on the occasion of an obscure Hoover speech in Dubuque and run a banner headline: "Hoover...