Prior to Ronald Reagan, who was the last US president whose first and last name began with the same letter?

Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was an American politician who served as the 31st President of the United States from 1929 to 1933 during the Great Depression. A Republican, as Secretary of Commerce in the 1920's he introduced Progressive Era themes of efficiency in the business community and provided government support for standardization, efficiency and international trade.

As president from 1929 to 1933, his ambitious programs were overwhelmed by the Great Depression, which seemed to get worse every year despite the increasingly large-scale interventions he made in the economy. He was defeated in a landslide in 1932 by Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, and spent the rest of his life as a conservative denouncing big government, liberalism and federal intervention in economic affairs, as Democrats repeatedly used his Depression record to attack conservatism and justify more regulation of the economy.

Throughout his presidency, Hoover defended the gold standard, and derided any other monetary system as "collectivism." In 1930, unemployment stood at 8.9%, and many assumed that the United States was just in another recession. But by 1932, unemployment had reached 24.9%, businesses had defaulted on record numbers of loans, and more than 5,000 banks had failed, especially small rural banks. The homeless lived in shantytowns they called Hoovervilles.