In a scene likened by appalled observers to the
worst excesses of the French Revolution, supporters of Andrew Jackson celebrated his inauguration in such numbers and such
a rambunctious fashion that the White House suffered damage and the new
President had to be spirited away from the premises. It’s a safe bet to say
that nothing like it was seen before—and, thankfully, nothing like it since.
Well, almost. A college professor of mine, in his
American Presidency seminar, noted that Ronald Reagan was the first White House occupant since Jackson who had been
elected to reverse the course of history. In many ways, the analogy is
imperfect: Jackson represented democratizing forces in his growing nation, and
he invoked Presidential powers in ways his predecessors never dreamed of.
But Reagan and the broad new coalition that swept
him into office, like Jackson and his, annoyed, even unnerved, observers who
belonged to the opposite political party. The flaunting of conspicuous wealth
by a number of Reagan supporters led humorist Calvin Trillin to term the 1981
inaugural ball “the Night of the Minks.”
“Old Hickory” had the opposite problem. There had
never been so many people gathered into the capital since the seat of
government had moved there nearly 30 years before. Most were well-behaved, but
they had been kept a long time outside on that cold day. Once inside the
unexpectedly crowded and stuffy interior, they congregated in such numbers that
the wooden floor threatened to give way.
Margaret Bayard Smith, an author and fixture of Washington society for the past three decades,
typified the general reaction when she wrote:
“But what a scene did we witness! The Majesty of the
People had disappeared, and a rabble, a mob, of boys, negros [sic], women,
children, scrambling fighting, romping. What a pity what a pity! No
arrangements had been made no police officers placed on duty and the whole
house had been inundated by the rabble mob.”
There is some question whether the criticism was
fully deserved. Most contemporary witnesses and newspapers reported only
minimal damage, and one common anecdote—about cheese ground into the White House
carpets by visitors’ boots—appears to be a distortion of an event that occurred
at the end of Jackson’s second term, according to a blog post by Scott Bomboy of the National Constitution Center.
But there was at least some truth to it. In the oval
drawing room, the general-turned-politician was so hard-pressed by admirers
that he began to gasp for air. His closest advisers managed to get him away
before he got hurt. (Even washtubs full of punch, placed outside the house to
lure people away, weren’t completely successful in that regard.)
The reaction to the events among Washington’s
reigning establishment reflected lingering ill-feelings about Jackson’s
character and intellect, an extraordinarily nasty Presidential campaign, and a
sea-change in the electorate that would transform the nation’s political culture over the next
three decades. Much the same thing happened with Reagan in 1981:
*A powerful
personality but faulty intellect. Jackson, hardly a scholar, couldn’t
spell. In fact, according to legend, he didn’t even see the need for it (“It is a damn poor mind who can't think of at least two ways to spell any word”.) Reagan was
excoriated for a lack of curiosity and an attachment to odd “facts” that
dissolved when scrutinized (e.g., that trees cause most pollution).
*Aftereffects
of bitter campaigns. If the 1824 election, which ended up in the House of
Representatives, didn’t end James Monroe’s “Era of Good Feelings,” the next
Presidential campaign did. Jackson’s followers, when they weren’t flaying John Quincy Adams for a “corrupt bargain” that secured him the Presidency and made
Clay his Secretary of State, charged the incumbent with “pimping” for the Czar
of Russia during one of his many diplomatic posts. Adams’ supporters called
Jackson an ignoramus, a murderer (for killing a man in a duel), and—in the
charge with the most collateral damage—an adulterer. He and
wife Rachel found out after the fact that her abusive first
husband had not filed for divorce, as expected, but only permission to get one, and that thus—at least initially invalid--she was still technically married to her first husband, and the first husband spitefully charged her with adultery before the divorce decree was granted. Jackson blamed her death just after the 1828 election on the stress
caused by the mudslinging, and, holding Adams personally responsible, he
refused to meet with him in the pre-inaugural transition. Though the 1980
election didn’t approach 1828 in bitterness, Jimmy Carter saw Reagan, in the words of
historian Douglas Brinkley, as “an unprincipled but telegenic B-grade Hollywood
cowboy who had ridden into the White House on such ‘patriotic’ themes as
abhorrence of government, xenophobia, and massive tax cuts.” For his part, Reagan
resented Carter’s charge that his opponent would divide the nation by pitting
whites against blacks and the rich against the poor.
*Disgruntled, depressed predecessors. Jackson
and Reagan succeeded men of intelligence and industry (Adams and Carter) whose
stiff-necked ways hobbled them when they sought to advance their legislative
program in Congress. Both Adams and Carter found it difficult to accept that
their own failings as politicians contributed to their massive defeats. Adams,
like his father, didn’t stick around to watch the new President inaugurated.
Once out of office, Carter criticized his successor repeatedly.
*New
presidents who broke with the past. Jackson, the first trans-Allegheny
President, broke the line of men who held the nation’s highest office who had
hailed from Virginia and Massachusetts. Reagan, a former actor who made his
home in California, represented a new breed in politics: someone who had gained
fame without being a lawyer, politician, or professional soldier.
*Agents of
change. With his stiff delivery, Jackson didn’t express himself memorably,
but he didn’t have anything memorable to express anyway. (See the inaugural
address here.) Reagan had a
different problem: a pre-political career as sports radio announcer, actor, TV
anthology host and corporate (GE) representative made him adept at wringing
nuance from every single sentence, but a glittering delivery that led him to be
nicknamed “The Great Communicator” couldn’t disguise the fact that his speeches
often couldn’t get past banalities. (See his address here.) But it didn’t matter, because their image
overrode everything. Both Jackson and Reagan came from the West, vowing to
Change Washington. Jackson heralded an age of “reform” (his word) now at hand; Reagan proclaimed
that big government wasn’t the solution, but part of the problem.
*Changing
economic directions. The Reaganauts chafed under the label given to their
program by Democrats: “trickle-down economics.” Had any of them been so
inclined, I suspect they would have been much more comfortable with a phrase
from Richard Hofstadter’s classic The American Political Tradition about
the Jacksonian economic program: “a phase in the expansion of liberated
capitalism.” It sounds fine indeed, wrenched out of Hofstadter’s trenchant
analysis. Another historian, Bray Hammond, spelled out what followed in the
1830s. The same trends held true in the 1980s: “Liberty became transformed into
laisser faire. A violent, aggressive
economic individualism became established. The democracy became greedy,
intolerant, imperialistic, and lawless. It opened economic advantages to those
who had not previously had them. . . . Wealth was won and lost, lost and won.
Patient accumulation was condemned.” Yes, “impatient capitalism” might be a
better description of what came to pass in both eras.
*Consolidation
of coalitions and dawn of new political eras. By 1828, with property
requirements and other restrictions increasingly eliminated, universal male
suffrage had become the norm in virtually all the states. The age of deference,
which had benefited the aristocratic Virginia and Adams dynasties, was over. A
rough-hewn man, as one might expect from someone that Hofstadter termed a “one-generation
aristocrat,” Jackson benefited from these tendencies, then gave it a decided
push forward. Martin Van Buren, the “Little Magician” of Jackson’s Cabinet,
welded Jackson's base in the Southwest, the slaveholding states of the Southeast and Northeast urban strongholds such as New York into the modern Democratic Party. Similarly, the Reagan
coalition put in the driver’s seat disaffected blue-collar conservative
Democrats, neo-conservatives, traditional Main Street conservatives and a “New
Right” of evangelical Christians motivated by social issues.
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