Tyler Cowen

But I would not point to him as an example of low talent.

I think he's a supreme talent, but harnessed to some bad ends.

Well, give me like a country and a name and a time period and I'll try to answer it.

He was from the university.

That's what was wrong with him, right?

And just think of what school it was.

Who, sorry?

Woodrow Wilson.

One of our two or three worst presidents on civil rights.

World War I, he screwed up.

The peace process, he screwed up.

Indirectly, he led to World War II.

reintroduced segregation of civil service in some key regards, and just seemed he was a nasty guy and should have been out of office sooner given his health and state of mind.

So he was terrible.

But he was sort of on paper a great candidate.

Hoover on paper was a great candidate and was an extremely impressive guy.

I think he made one very bad set of decisions relating to deflation and letting nominal GDP fall.

But my goodness, like there's a reason they called it the Hoover Institution after Hoover.

I don't think I have like a good macro explanation of that whole trend, but I would say a few things.

That's right after the period where the world is changing the most.