Donald Trump has hung a portrait of Andrew Jackson, the nation’s seventh president, next to his desk in the Oval Office and members of his staff are touting the idea that the two men have a lot in common. Vice President Mike Pence has boasted of Trump’s victory, “There hasn’t been anything like this since Andrew Jackson.”
That may actually be true. There are already signs of similarities between the two men and it’s a cause for significant concern.
Like Trump, Jackson was brash, abrasive, defensive and quick-tempered and both were described as vulgar and unfit to govern. Jackson was also thin-skinned and felt the world was against him and that the ruling elites looked down on him. Both expressed extreme loyalty to controversial advisers and elevated them to powerful positions in their administrations with disastrous effect. Both were called tyrants and bullies and like Trump, Jackson professed to always put American interests first and inveighed against “alien enemies.”
Trump addresses his critics and enemies in media appearances, speeches and tweets, while Jackson engaged in duels, even killing one of his opponents.
Cartoons on President Donald Trump
Trump has the least amount of government or military experience – which is to say none – of any president in history, but Jackson served as a judge, represented Tennessee in the House and Senate, was the first governor of Florida and was a hero in the War of 1812.
Both are considered populists, although it can be argued Trump’s is a faux populism ginned up to win support from people with which he has nothing in common. Jackson truly did come from humble origins and was a self-made man, although his fortune was made largely through the ownership of slaves and by speculating on Indian lands which he later seized for himself and the United States.
Like Trump, Jackson reportedly spoke to the people using vivid, accessible language. Jackson was fervently devoted to the idea of majority rule and in his two successful presidential elections won the popular vote and suggested the Electoral College be abolished. This was no doubt due to his experience in 1824 when he won the most votes in a crowded field but not a majority. The election was thrown into the House of Representatives and thanks to what he labeled the “corrupt bargain,” Henry Clay threw his support behind John Quincy Adams, who won the presidency and subsequently named Clay his secretary of state.
Jackson seethed over this and began working immediately to win the next presidential election, and like Trump railed against the corruption of the Washington elites. But both men after taking office installed their own supporters, wealthy friends and family members as advisers and cabinet members, which for Jackson often proved disastrous.
Jackson, the first president from the Democratic Party, viewed political equality for all (white men) as central to the nation’s founding principles. In Trump’s slogan to “Make America Great Again,” there is a hint of Jackson’s frequent harkening back to the founding principles.
Both men took office at a time of social and economic upheaval. In Jackson’s case, the United States was at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution when a manufacturing sector, commercial agriculture and a market economy were being created along with changes in transportation and communication. Just as there are today, there were big economic winners in Jackson’s age who were able to take advantage of these changes and many others who were left behind. Jackson’s policies, like those of Trump, were designed to appeal to those who felt threatened by economic change.
Historian H.W. Brands, who refers to Trump’s “penthouse populism,” dismisses the idea that there are meaningful similarities between the two men.
But the most striking commonality between Donald Trump and Andrew Jackson is their use of race to divide the nation and unite their supporters and their seeming disdain for the rule of law.
The concept of Herrenvolk (master race) democracy is the idea of oppressing one or more racial groups while promoting the idea of equality among the white oppressors. For Trump, this involves Muslims and Mexicans who have become scapegoats for our national security threats and manufacturing job losses. In Jackson’s case, the most egregious example was his removal of Native Americans from Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama to Oklahoma in the Trail of Tears in which 4,000 Indians died on the journey. Jackson was unapologetic in asserting that he was recovering the land for white American settlement.
Jackson ignored law and the Constitution when he considered the nation to be threatened, defied a Supreme Court decision in his removal of the Indians and asserted that his authority to determine what was constitutional was equal to the court. In the Trump administration’s temporary ban on refugees and the subsequent court decisions to block parts of the order, we may be headed for a similar showdown over perceived security threats versus the Constitution.
In Jackson’s biggest fight against the Bank of the United States and his veto of its congressionally approved charter, he asserted that his overwhelming re-election in 1832 gave him a mandate to challenge Congress and to express the will of the people. His “bank war” was also a proxy for the battles Jackson was waging against wealthy elites, foreigners and the economic changes that were happening in the country and is not dissimilar from the kind of misdirection Trump also practices.
When Jackson was censured by the Senate for his actions involving the Bank of the United States, he asserted that he was “the direct representative of the people” and attacking him was like attacking democracy. One can certainly imagine President Trump using a similar line of argument after his first major disagreement with Congress.
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