Donald Trump Is No Andrew Jackson, and Other Errors of Stephen Bannon

Is there a little bit of Andrew Jackson in Trump? Stephen Bannon has said there is, and so has Rudolph Giuliani, and likewise any number of journalists, and the seeming unanimity has elevated the claim into the cliché of the hour. The cliché is wrong, however. And it is triply unfortunate. Historically it is an error. Politically it is an error. It makes Trump appear to be merely one more colorful character from ancient American political tradition, when he is, in fact, something new. And politically it is an error in still another way. The ghost of Andrew Jackson might have a lot to say to us right now, if only we would pay attention. A small lecture from the early republic about American fundamentals—that is exactly what we need. But the error about Jackson and Trump makes paying attention hard to do.

Jackson—dimly, you will recall—was not quite a Founding Father, but he was close enough. He did fight in the Revolutionary War, if only as a boy. The first six presidents were the various Virginians, together with the Adams family, but Jackson came next. His purpose and theirs were the same. This was to defend and advance the American Revolution. He proposed a clarification, though. The Founding Fathers, most of them, pictured the revolutionary new society of their dreams in a vaguely aristocratic light. This was entirely natural on their part, given the long-ago English background, and the not-so-long-ago colonial background, and everyone’s educational background. People studied the classics, with special emphasis on the republic of ancient Rome, which was strictly aristocratic, not to mention slave-owning.

Continue reading "Donald Trump Is No Andrew Jackson, and Other Errors of Stephen Bannon" at...