…and it came at a cost that we are still paying.
When we were in Nashville this spring I took my family on a tour of The Hermitage, the estate of former President Andrew Jackson.
While I was there, as I so often do, I purchased a book about the person. In this case it was American Lion by Jon Meacham.
Before reading it I knew the basics about the man, as so many of my fellow citizens do…
–hero of the Battle of New Orleans at the end of the War of 1812,
–frontier lawyer and landowner, unapologetic slaveowner, devoted to his wife Rachel who died before he was sworn in as POTUS,
–that he hated the Bank of the United States,
–felt he was a man of the people and worked for them,
–that his inauguration saw a huge raucous house party in the White House,
–his big block of cheese (thanks John Spencer and The West Wing tv show),
–the Nullification Crisis with South Carolina, and
–the massive stain on our country’s history that was the Trail of Tears.
After reading it (it’s a really good book btw), I had a newfound appreciation for the man and a better ability to judge him based on the times he lived in (still 100% wrong about slavery and the forced removal of the Native Americans even during his own times), but I also came away with a valuable insight into leadership that applies to modern times.
The big problem with a leader like Donald Trump is that he is amoral and only cares about himself while he’s expanding the power of the presidency. Despite his words, at the end of the day he doesn’t care about the country or the average person.
The big problem with a leader like Andrew Jackson is that he is completely strident and mostly inflexible in his views, be they about ethics, morality, or policy.
While he truly did care about the country and the average person, because of his harsh & uncompromising leadership style he was just as damaging to the country in how he went about expanding the executive branch then as someone like Donald Trump is now.
You could argue that Andrew Jackson, however well intentioned and well meaning, was America’s first wannabe authoritarian leader.
The United States survived his time in office purely because:
1) he respected the rule of law for the most part,
2) respected and valued our then still new traditions of 2 terms,
3) was in ill health throughout his presidency, and
4) the lessons and experiences of the founding generation were still fresh in the conscience of the nation and some of the founders were still alive to share their views on what was going on and how it correlated to what they intended when drafting the Constitution.
For example, when Jackson broke with tradition and was the first president to use the veto power for policy instead of for purely constitutional reasonings, former President James Madison spoke out and said that the founders did not anticipate the chief executive using the veto power in such a way to flout the will of Congress.
Btw, interestingly enough, a big issue of Jackson’s time was tariffs and the negative impact they were having on the country, primarily the slaveholding states (it’s what led to South Carolina’s attempt at nullification, which in turn was a dress rehearsal for the Civil War and the attempt at secession 30 years later).
As the saying goes, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. I truly hope not. For all our sakes.
Perry Waag 