I have said from time to time that government is what liberals have instead of God. So in this watershed year, that begs the question: Is Donald Trump now all that conservatives have? Truly, God help us all.
So, has the United States ever had such a person as its commander in chief? Well, yes. I’m reminded of Andrew Jackson, once proudly claimed as the father of the Democrat Party and whose face adorns the $20 bill in our wallets.
Immigration and deportation — “Old Hickory” had a long adversarial history with Native Americans (in my unenlightened youth, we called them “Indians”), stole land from them, revoked their treaties and when he became President, set in motion the forcible removal of Southeastern Indian tribes via what is now called the Trail of Tears to the inhospitable Oklahoma territory.
Jackson’s Indian Removal Act of 1830 was his and his Democratic Party’s first legislative victory.
Yes, mass deportations have a solid basis in American history, prior to The Donald.
A rich man but popular with the common folk — Jackson made a lot of money in land speculation (including the sale of Indian land upon which Memphis, Tennessee now sits) and raised a lot of cotton with slave labor to earn him a spot among the elite plantation owners of his state. In addition to owning up to 150 slaves, he was a notorious slave trader who bought and sold them strictly for profit, not for plantation labor.
And how about those smoky back rooms? — He was a merchant and a lawyer and got nominated to run for President in a rump convention as a “voice of the people.” He got a plurality of the popular vote, but without an Electoral College majority, he lost the election in the U.S. House of Representatives in what he later called a “corrupt bargain” that saw John Quincy Adams being named President and then in turn naming House Speaker Henry Clay as his Secretary of State.
Incendiary rhetoric, anybody? — The next time he ran as the standard-bearer of the newly formed Democratic Party and deprived Adams of a second term. His opponents accused his wife of being a bigamist, and Jackson blamed them for Rachel’s death just before he was sworn in. “May God Almighty forgive her murderers,” he swore at her funeral.”I never can.”
Executive power — U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall in the majority opinion said Georgia had no authority over native Americans. Jackson ignored the court ruling and forced the Cherokees to sign the Treaty of New Echota, which led to the forced deportation of 45,000 native Americans to western lands they had never seen.
A wealthy man opposes the biggest bank of all — Jackson vetoed the national bank, an early version of the Federal Reserve, accusing it of making “the rich richer and the potent more powerful.” His opponents accused him of class warfare. He continued his war on banking, eventually issuing an executive order requiring payment for public lands in gold and silver coinage rather than bank notes, resulting in the Panic of 1837 when banks ran short of precious metals to cover their paper money.
Now so far I haven’t said anything about all the good, even great, things that Jackson did, just the things that bear some passing resemblance to our current Republican candidate crashing about in the nation’s china shop and to the fears about what he might do.
But it is instructive to see that the American nation was quite a sturdy receptical capable of withstanding much more of a populist bull than anything currently on any state ballot.
Yes, a lot of folks got hurt. Yes, cracks in the nation’s culture eventually ended in the earthquake of a civil war. Yes, we have some big cracks showing in our foundational principles today. Yes, we don’t know where this is all leading.
But here’s the thing: You’ve got Andrew Jackson in your pocket now. And he’s still worth something. So will there be a Trump or a Clinton on some future currency? There’s a better than even chance that one of them will be. And that piece of currency, whatever its denomination, whoever’s face is on it, will still be worth something in that new day that we cannot now see.
Here’s to a calmer 2017.
[Cal Beverly has been the editor and publisher of The Citizen since 1993, shortly after Bill Clinton became President.]
