I’m the only person of distinction who has ever had a depression named for him.

Hoover’s quip is a piece of self-deprecating gallows humor about historical blame. The Great Depression began during his presidency, and political opponents and popular discourse often personalized the catastrophe as “Hoover’s” failure—seen in terms like “Hoovervilles” for shantytowns and “Hoover blankets” for newspapers used as bedding. By calling himself a “person of distinction,” he wryly acknowledges his prominence while protesting the unfairness of having a vast, complex economic collapse attached to his name. The line also hints at how public memory simplifies events by assigning them to a single figure, turning structural crises into moral judgments about leadership.