The portrait of President Andrew Jackson has lately made a comeback within the Oval Workplace. “Old Hickory” – Jackson’s nickname – has lengthy been a favourite of President Donald Trump.
Trump identifies with Jackson on many ranges. As a person and a frontrunner, he likes the brash, confrontational, hypermasculine, lionlike perspective that characterised the seventh president. Jackson pushed govt energy to the boundaries, identical to Trump tries to do.
And there’s a commonality of philosophical and political visions. The 2 faucet into the identical definition of freedom. They each consider the president has freedom from all restraint and from each type of legislative or judicial management.
Nonetheless, variations exist between the 2 which may immediate Trump to think about the potential hazard of how he governs and whom he listens to.
Private loyalty and devotion
As an skilled on American presidents, I can state with confidence that Trump shouldn’t be the primary to insist on full obedience from his subordinates. Neither is he the primary to take disagreement personally.
Trump’s try to create a military of sycophants, alongside along with his effort to purge authorities employees he deems disloyal, is nothing new in America.
Private loyalty and devotion had been vital to Andrew Jackson, who didn’t belief human nature. However he was steadfast in his belief, as soon as he determined to put it in an individual.
When Jackson had to decide on his advisers and form his first Cupboard, he relied on cronies from his beloved Tennessee – plus a handful of kin.
Essentially the most well-known and notorious of these pals was John H. Eaton. Eaton had developed a brotherly relationship with Jackson. Jackson felt indebted to him as a result of Eaton had run his presidential campaigns of 1824 and 1828. Eaton would turn into secretary of battle, however he additionally ended up embarrassing the president.
A political cartoon depicts President Andrew Jackson sitting surprised as his Cupboard, represented as rats, runs to flee his falling home through the political scandal surrounding the Eaton Affair.
Bettman/Getty Pictures
First off, he had an affair with a married girl, Margaret O’Neale Timberlake, whose husband was usually at sea. When in 1828 Mr. Timberlake died overseas, rumor unfold that he had slashed his personal throat due to Margaret’s infidelity.
In Washington, D.C., gossip quickly grew to become ugly about what was often called the Eaton Affair. It in the end led to the resignation of some Cupboard officers.
Jackson was irate. He had at all times realized he didn’t belong within the elite society of Washington, D.C. He was too self-conscious about his total persona and too conscious that he was perceived as an intruder. Consequently, he often reacted defensively and sometimes violently, thus betraying insecurity: “Our society wants purging here,” he wrote to one in all his mates in 1829.
Beneath the identical roof
Jackson’s clan lived with him within the White Home. There was Andrew Jackson Jr., a nephew and his adopted son. Andrew Jr. would inherit an enormous fortune, however he would die in debt. It’s no shock that historians have described him as “irresponsible and ambitionless, a considerable disappointment to his father.”
There was Andrew Jackson Donelson and his spouse, Emily. Donelson was the nephew of the just-deceased spouse of the president, Rachel Jackson, who tragically died simply days after her husband received the 1828 election. Donelson had served with Jackson within the Florida Battle – often called the First Seminole Battle – and later grew to become his personal secretary. Emily Donelson would act because the president’s hostess within the White Home.
One other shut buddy from Tennessee, Maj. William B. Lewis, additionally moved into the White Home. Additionally a presidential adviser, Lewis gained the official title of second auditor of the Treasury. However the Donelsons couldn’t stand the person. Emily Donelson would finally label him a “sycophant” who had seized a possibility to “save himself all expense.”
As he formed his first Cupboard, Jackson constantly ignored the options coming from the 2 higher-profile characters of his administration, Martin Van Buren and John C. Calhoun. It wasn’t simply an ideological distinction; it was that neither of them had been early Jackson males.
Surrounded by a couple of favorites
Jackson, the president who made no secret that he was operating a one-man present, had a presidential model derived from his army expertise. As a basic, Jackson not often summoned councils of battle. When he needed to resolve on a given plan of action, he didn’t share accountability.
However critics noticed issues in a very totally different manner. Within the spring of 1831, Sen. George Poindexter, a hesitant Jacksonian, complained that Jackson was “surrounded by a few favorites who controlled and directed all things.”
To explain the casual group of mates, relations and advisers whom they believed maintained too nice an affect over the president, the opposition coined the phrase “kitchen cabinet.”
However the opposition’s picture of the “kitchen cabinet” was not the truth. Irrespective of his private quirks, Jackson proved to be a superb administrator. And opposite to Emily Donelson’s fears, he resisted sycophants and self-interested counselors.
Elon Musk, proper, is a high adviser and donor to Donald Trump and directs the administration’s effort to chop authorities spending.
Brandon Bell/Getty Pictures
A builder, not a destroyer
Jackson escaped manipulation as a result of he managed to maintain his eyes on his increased objective, the expansionist concept of the American nation.
He sought to create a blueprint for a authorities that will outlast him. He enacted impersonal guidelines that had been sustained by elaborate methods of checks and balances. Whether or not you want him or not, Jackson was a builder, not a destroyer, of administrations.
The circumstances of the Jackson and Trump presidencies would possibly look related, however the bottom line is that they’re two very totally different males. Each wished to totally reform the federal authorities, confronted scandal, felt like an outsider in Washington, D.C., and had all types of shut loyalists round pushing their agendas.
However Jackson didn’t get distracted. So he was not a helpful puppet for individuals who sought to take advantage of him that manner.
Against this, it will likely be tough for Trump to morph into President Jackson. For the reason that Nineteen Seventies, the ability of unelected and unconfirmed presidential aides and counselors has turn into extra intense.
These people could simply find yourself negotiating offers or directing the course of occasions whereas escaping each congressional oversight and public scrutiny.
Of their unaccountable affect, they’re joined by main donors to a president’s marketing campaign or causes.
There’s little question that they’re a possible legal responsibility extra harmful than Jackson’s sycophants, extra problematic than his cronies, extra embarrassing than his wacky nephews.