After starting to research the idea that Bush represents a neo-Jacksonian trend in American national politics, I found this article in the Washington Pest.
Guess what?
Karl Rove, of all people, agrees with this assessment. he seems to first hve expressed this thought in '02. Rove is a political genius:
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
Another Ol' Hickory in the White House?
By Dana Milbank
Tuesday, September 17, 2002; Page A19
When President Bush travels today to Andrew Jackson's hometown of Nashville, he may wish to stop by the Hermitage and lay a wreath at the grave of the Hero of New Orleans. More and more, Bush has been acting like the seventh president.
Superficially, such a comparison is absurd. Jackson led a populist revolt against concentrated wealth in undoing the Bank of the United States; Bush is closely allied with corporate interests. Jackson lost a disputed election in 1824 to the son of a former president; Bush, as son of a former president, won such a disputed election. Jackson was an uneducated war hero and father of the Democratic Party. Bush, of Andover, Yale, Harvard and the Texas National Guard, came to office in hopes of imitating McKinley, who defeated Jacksonian style populism in building the modern Republican Party a century ago.
But the White House is convinced of the similarities. Top Bush strategist Karl Rove, in fact, has invited historian Robert Remini to lecture senior officials at the White House Thursday on similarities between Bush and Jackson. "There are a lot of Jackson fans there, including Karl Rove," Remini said.
In fact, Remini said of Rove's new model for Bush, "there's something to it."
Jackson clashed with Congress and the judiciary as he sought to build the president's power. Opponents accused him of eliminating civil liberties and cartoonists portrayed him as King Andrew. The Bush administration has battled with Congress over intelligence sharing and war powers, and with the judiciary over the rights of the accused.
Jackson was a frontiersman who spoke of the "idiots" in Washington. The cowboy-boot wearing Bush often ridicules Washington in speeches.
Jackson had a fierce temper and was ruthless against his enemies. Bush, too, is known for his hot temper and for dividing his world into friends and enemies. Bush keeps a scorecard with photos of wanted terrorists and checks them off as they are killed.
The greatest similarity, though, may be the Jackson and Bush worldviews. Since Sept. 11 in particular, Bush's aggressive use of American power -- "unilateralist" to critics -- follows very closely the Jacksonian approach.
The Council on Foreign Relations' Walter Russell Mead, in a book last year titled "Special Providence," discerned four strains of American foreign policy: the Hamiltonian approach, which favors international commerce and institutions; the Jeffersonian approach, which frowns on costly international entanglements; the Jacksonian approach, an unapologetic flexing of military might; and the Wilsonian approach, an internationalism based on moral values.
The first President Bush had heavy Hamiltonian instincts. Bill Clinton mixed the Hamiltonian with the Wilsonian. Mead's book came out before it was possible to categorize the current president and his response to the Sept. 11 attacks. A recent conversation with Mead, though, allowed for some updating: Bush, he says, is increasingly pure Jacksonian.
The Jacksonian label "summarizes everything Europeans don't like about a strain of American foreign policy," Mead said. "It's a feeling that the preservation of our people, our national community, is the highest law."
Jacksonians have little use for international law. When Jackson was fighting Indians, he crossed into foreign territory, arrested and hanged British subjects. As president, he sent the Navy to Sumatra to burn a settlement that had insulted the American flag.
Bush, likewise, has incurred the wrath of allies for rejecting the International Criminal Court, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Kyoto Accord on global warming. Now he threatens to take unilateral action against Iraq if the United Nations will not join him. Bush's disdain for "nation building" fits closely with the Jacksonian view that foreign policy is not about spreading humanitarian values. Similarly, the treatment of terrorists in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and efforts to deny suspected terrorists the normal judicial protections follow the Jacksonian view that enemies do not deserve compassion.
So what does this mean for the future of Bush's foreign policy? It's not terribly good news for Iraq and the others in the Axis of Evil. Jacksonians, Mead said, "fight wars ruthlessly and totally."
The danger, Mead said, is that a Jacksonian foreign policy can unleash forces that spin out of control. If the war on terrorism goes badly -- if there are more attacks in the United States, for example -- the patriotic passions stirred up by the Jacksonians can turn into McCarthy-style paranoia -- and leadership that doesn't share Bush's stated regard for democratic traditions. "If Bush fails to contain terror and shape a popular response, you get something much tougher to deal with," Mead said. "I don't think the political alternative is moderation." |
