Trump Heir to Jacksonian Populism

The following comments were voiced by prominent politicians about a U.S. president:

“There is more effrontery in putting forward a man of his bad character — a man covered with crimes … than ever was attempted before an intelligent people.”

“The reign of ‘King Mob’ seems triumphant.”

“[Due to the president] the country is ruined past redemption; it is ruined in the spirit and character of the people. There is abjectness of spirit that appalls and disgust me.”

“He is the most unfit man I know of for [the presidency] … he is a dangerous man.”

“I think [the president] is a man ... with no power of reasoning out his conclusions, or of impairing them intellectually to other persons.

“I look upon [him] as a detestable, ignorant, reckless, vain, and malignant tyrant.”

Who do you think was being disparaged? If you guessed Donald Trump, you are wrong. They were directed toward the seventh president of the United States, Andrew Jackson (1767-1845).

Jackson, the founder of the Democratic Party, was despised by American elites — educators, bankers, captains of industry, aristocratic politicians, and career bureaucrats in the nation’s capital.

Yet, despite elite opposition, Jackson had a huge influence on American democracy. Renowned liberal historian, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., aptly called his era, in his Pulitzer prize-winning book, The Age of Jackson.

The Jacksonian code, historian Walter Russell Mead noted in a 2011 essay in the National Interest, called for self-reliance, absolute equality of dignity and right, individualism, loyalty to family, and courage “to defend their honor in great and small things.”

Adherents believed “that the government should do everything in its power to promote the well-being — political, moral, economic — of the folk community. Any means are permissible in the service of this end, as long as they do not violate the moral feelings or infringe on the freedoms that Jacksonians believe are essential in their daily lives.”

The profoundly Jacksonian populist worldview, Mead added, “believes that the political and moral instincts of the American people are sound and can be trusted, and that the simpler and more direct the process of government is, the better will be the results.”

And Jacksonians were not ideologically driven, but God-fearing folks driven by a moral sense. They believed in original sin and did not accept the Enlightenment belief that man could achieve heaven on earth.

The Jacksonian code, which protected the interests of the nation’s working class, guided the Democratic Party until 1932.

The New Deal resulted in the empowerment of a new class of social planners equally capable of bold innovation and of exercising coercive political power.

Sensing the change, New York’s great Democratic populist, Alfred E. Smith, took a walk from his party in 1936 declaring the neighborhood Democrats were “out on a limb holding the bag, driven out of the party, because some new bunch that nobody ever heard of in their life before came in and took charge and started planning everything.”

In the post-World War II era, the great migration of Jacksonian Democrats began. They became Nixon Democrats and Reagan Democrats.

The Republican Party that was once the home of big business, Progressives, social engineers and eugenicists, had become the party of the little guy.

Meanwhile, as political analyst Kevin Phillips pointed out, the Democratic Party became the home of “research directors, associate professors, social workers, educational consultants, urbanologists, development planners, journalists, foundation staffers, communication specialists, culture vendors, poverty theorists,” and public employee union bosses.

This political phenomenon made possible the rise of Donald Trump and his populist agenda.

Like Jackson, Trump has been demonized by elites and portrayed as a king and a tyrant.

Like Jackson, Trump is suspicious of big government, excessive global ambitions, and holds that ever-growing power in the hands of elites leads to corruption and abuse.

And like Jackson, Trump has faith in the people to make their own decisions about their lives.

This fall, if Trump promotes the Jacksonian code, states repeatedly “that the forgotten men and women will be forgotten no longer,” avoids hurtful bombastic rhetoric and ugly name-calling, he will easily beat the deep blue Californian radical — Kamala Harris.