I've recently been reading The Power Broker by Robert Caro, about Robert Moses, the Parks Commisioner who drove most of the building of the parks and roadway infrastructure of New York in the 20s-60s. It's a huge book, with a lot of asides into Alfred Smith, Tammany Hall, FDR, etc. (I'm only about halfway in, before Moses runs for Governor).

I can't help but notice parallels with Moses and Hoover, with the 'politicians' they decry, the ones they seem to celebrate, their sympathy for the masses crossed with personal antipathy toward individuals. I can't help but consider lessons this has for our current crisis, I can't help but think about how Truman relatively successfully navigated the assumption of the presidency from Roosevelt after being frozen out and manages to not totally bungle the end of WWII. I can't help but note how some people are who are completely effective in one time requiring action end up totally screwing up in others.

All that to say, I think we can learn lessons from Hoover, from the past, and apply them to our current situation and the future.

1) Sometimes, the egomaniacl jerk gets great things done. Later, they can use the power to screw up massively. 2) History lets us review responses to crisises and point out how they could have been done better, but we probably won't apply any of those lesssons to our own crisis. 3) Demonstrably compentent people can have demonstrably incompetent responses to crisises - demonstrably incompetent people rarely have compentent ones.