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Weekly Column: Old Leader, Familiar Themes

Posted by pblackwell | 02/08/09

Late in 1833, Andrew Jackson, seventh President of the United States, was in the midst of bringing down the Bank of the United States. He was convinced the money belonged in state banks and was bent on stopping the national bank’s recharter before its haughty chairman, Nicholas Biddle, bought off members of Congress.
When the national bank called in loans and restricted credit, merchants freaked. Some of them went to Jackson himself, begging for mercy, or money, or something to make their business flow again.
But when the merchants talked of the people’s troubles, Jackson was blunt: “The people, sir, are with me.”
So Jackson always thought, through eight tumultuous years in the White House vividly chronicled in Jon Meacham’s recent book “American Lion”, a story that carries all sorts of eerie echoes to the current state we are in.
To nearly everyone outside the scholarly or political realm, Jackson is nothing more than the white-haired guy on the 20-dollar bill, a distant American figure less revered and well-known than the likes of Washington or Lincoln, whose 200th birthday we celebrate this week.
If only they knew the whole story. Born on the Carolina colonial frontier, raised without much parental guidance, fighting in the Revolutionary War as a boy, Jackson literally grew up with the nation, carrying all of its dreams – and all of its prejudices, too.
For all the time he spent as a lawyer and politician, Jackson became immortal in the eyes of his people by winning the battle of New Orleans at the end of the War of 1812. The fame from that victory would eventually carry him to the presidency.
From his campaigns onward, Jackson’s powerful enemies cast him as a would-be king or emperor, mad with power, mad for glory, or just plain mad. There was some reason behind this (he once killed a man in a duel), but Jackson wouldn’t give them any satisfaction.
Above all, Jackson loved conflict. If it wouldn’t be redcoats or Native American tribes, he would find other enemies to try and bring down. From Cabinet members that didn’t treat his friends well, to fire-eating South Carolina politicians (including one-time vice president John C. Calhoun) who wanted to nullify a high tariff and bring down his beloved Union, to proponents of the national bank, Jackson took them all on – and won every time.
As Meacham points out, Jackson was really the first president to wield the full power of the executive branch, whether it was use of the veto or the calling up of federal troops to quell the possible South Carolina insurrection. In the latter, he considered the Constitution and the Union supreme, a tactic Lincoln would borrow from in the early days of the Civil War.
Just as he thought he was the instrument of the majority of the American people, Jackson took his cues on controversial topics from that same viewpoint, even if it was flawed and full of prejudice. He accepted slavery, of course, and the brutal treatment of Native tribes, from wars to the “Trail of Tears”, could not possibly be reconciled.
The value in Meacham’s book comes on two levels. First, it’s quite an insight into Jackson and his inner circle, from “Kitchen Cabinet” buddies to the Donelsons, a couple that filled the social gap left when Jackson’s beloved wife, Rachel, died late in 1828 just before he took office.
Then you get to the relevancy to modern times. Aside from Lincoln, both Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt would evoke Jackson in their actions to expand executive power in times of crisis, and Harry Truman had a particular affinity for Jackson and his man-of-the-people appeal to the common folk.
Yet as I read this book, and the current economic crisis worsened, I couldn’t help but notice the strange similarity between Jackson’s battle with the national bank and our current political conflict raging in the halls of the White House and Congress.
As he took office a few weeks ago, Barack Obama was set on addressing the country’s economic woes, and in a hurry. Then he ran into a Washington establishment that has done everything possible to ruin his stimulus package.
House Democrats added some goodies, which was bad. Then House GOP members took marching orders from a radio windbag, and that was worse. On to the Senate, where it got further bogged down. All the while, the media establishment, determined to show that they weren’t deferential to the new president, eagerly embraced the conflict.
It got to the point where Obama needed to invoke his trump card – the same that Jackson used all those years ago. Through a TV prime-time news conference and town-hall meetings in hard-hit places like Indiana and Florida, he’s talking right to the people, perhaps reminding those in Washington that there is a world beyond the Beltway and, man, they are hurting.
Now, as in Andrew Jackson’s time, it sure seems like the will of career politicians is lined up against the needs, hopes and dreams of a popular president. In other words, the people, sir, are with Mr. Obama, if only for now.
Thus, the timing of “American Lion” couldn’t be better, for Jon Meacham has given us a grand tale of a unique leader and a colorful political era – while, at the same time, providing ironic foreshadowing for the times we are living through.

CATEGORY: Government

TAGS: Andrew Jackson, presidency, "American Lion", Jon Meacham

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