Donald Trump has presented himself as a populist figure, a champion of the common man, and a scourge of the established elite. In this respect he mirrors the campaigning style of Andrew Jackson, the seventh US President who was in office from 1829 to 1837. Indeed Trump and his supporters have frequently drawn the comparison, while the 45th president displays a portrait of Jackson in his office in the White House. However, many have contended that Trump’s self-portrayal as man-of-the-people is a sham, a fabrication designed wholly to lubricate his path to political power and to maintain him in that position. While Jackson was a flawed individual who failed to live up to his will-of-the-people message, he was largely sincere in believing what he was broadcasting. Trump, by contrast, exhibits sociopathic traits, appearing to hold no principles, ideals or aims beyond adopting whatever he thinks will benefit his thirst for power. Ultimately the question of whether Trump is a Jacksonian depends upon whether it is the myth or the historical reality of Jackson against which Trump is compared.
The most commonly-held linkage between Jackson and Trump is widely viewed by historians to be populism, but that slippery term needs to be explored and defined. This article considers Jackson and Trump as both presidential candidates and presidents, and explores their democratic credentials. The main focus is upon the style of political campaigning and governance, but because it is dealing with a phenomenon which requires a charismatic leader, it is essential to look at the character, beliefs and personal behaviours of each man.
There is also a second linkage – the aims and practices of American foreign policy. For some commentators and historians, Jacksonianism’s principal plank is about America’s place in the world, and therefore it is of particular importance in assessing whether Trump is a latter-day Jacksonian.
Populism
Unlike, for instance, socialism, liberalism or anarchism, there is no general theory of populism (Müller 2017). It is an essentially-contested term and a label rarely claimed by the people or movements which are described as such. Sometimes it is employed as a pejorative description by those opposing populism. Nevertheless, there is broad agreement on certain structural features and ideological similarities within populist movements throughout modern history (Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2017). These movements claim an affinity with the “will of the people”, and declare that the values of the people are morally superior to the venality and corruption of the ruling classes and elites of their societies. These degenerate groups manipulate and conspire against “ordinary” people whom they hold in contempt (Spruyt, Keppens and van Droogenbroek, 2016). Exceptionalist nationalism, which is frequently accompanied by exclusivist racial hostility, is a further prominent characteristic of most populist movements.
Populism is invariably associated with a charismatic leader, but such men (almost always men) are unable to grasp power unless there is an already-existing body of popular opinion echoing their views (Spruyt, 2016). Despite its aggressively hostile and negative rhetoric, populism retains an element of hope through its “redemptive” quality of aiming for a better world, even if that arises out of anger or despair (Canovan, 1999). Populism almost always emerges within a democracy despite often embodying anti-democratic elements. Jason Frank (2018) says, “The central claim of populism… is that only some of the people really are ‘the People’.” Jan-Werner Müller (2017, 6) argues it is “a degraded form of democracy that promises to make good on democracy’s highest ideals.”
However, many populists view themselves as the only authentic type of democrat, sometimes aspiring to participatory democracy as practised in ancient Athens, or the city-state model favoured by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau coined the term the “General Will” which he saw emerging when everyone becomes a participating citizen, a method he deemed more just and responsive than representative government. The corollary that all must obey the General Will which flows from this type of democracy invites the criticism that it fosters intolerance of minorities and produces totalitarian tendencies (Williams, 2014). Despite their populist rhetoric, neither Trump nor Jackson entertained the idea of allowing ordinary people to take part in policy-making.
There is a disjunction between the charismatic leaders’ clarion-call of “people power” and the reality of those leaders rigorously hoarding it to themselves. Margaret Canovan (1999) suggests that hostility towards the elites is fundamentally a rejection of their values. She argues convincingly that populism is best defined by a style and attitude rather than by political particulars which vary widely from place to place and age to age. The mood of a populist movement is projected on to its leader and a putative close personal identification with him, however illusory that might be, encourages its members to trust him and believe fervently that their political agenda is also his.
The result of this politics of faith-over-reason is a type of majoritarian democracy which can lead to an illiberal democracy as exemplified by Viktor Orban, Hungary’s current populist Prime Minister who has personally confirmed that this is exactly what he is aiming for (Inotai, 2019). Michael Boyle (2016) has been warning of the dangers of illiberalism for more than a decade, of the threat posed by the increasing number of authoritarian states emerging since the 1990s. These challenge the international order largely built and maintained by the USA and other Western liberal democracies. With the advent of Trump, there is a danger of America becoming part of the problem rather than the solution.
Analysts of populist movements have repeatedly observed that many of their adherents are poorly educated and/or poor. They harbour legitimate grievances over inequality, neglect, poor prospects and an indifference to their condition among the ruling elites (Spruyt et al, 2016). Consequently there is a tendency among them to support political candidates who seem to embody some of their characteristics, particularly a lack of formal education and/or a perception of being excluded from the elites. This goes some way to explaining how a billionaire such as Trump is supported by those with little or no wealth or power, or why Jackson the plantation owner was adopted by people far less privileged than he.
Similar to Canovan’s thesis that populism is more about form than content, is the argument of Mudde and Kaltwasser (2017, 5) that it is a “thin-centred ideology”. This means that it does not constitute a full ideology in the sense of a way of understanding the world, defining human nature, framing a normative position, or advocating how the world should be ordered. Instead it attaches itself to other ideologies, so that it can appear left-wing, right-wing or a combination of both.
Electoral Victories and Approaches to Democracy
For both Jackson and Trump, their electoral successes did not depend upon standing at a time of acute crisis. Instead, there was a widespread sense of corruption, unmerited privilege, cronyism, and elitist indifference to the common people in both 1828 and 2016. In both cases it was this already-existing undercurrent of often invisible grievances which was an essential precondition for their populist pitches to thrive.
Jackson biographer, Robert Remini, says, “Jackson regarded the Washington bureaucracy as an ‘Augean stable’ – the figure of speech he invariably employed when referring to it, as did his close associates – and he believed he was just the man to cleanse it, having obtained the people’s mandate to do so.” (1981, 183). Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp” is remarkably similar. Once in office however, each appointed his own supporters and loyalists to positions of power, although Trump initially engaged a host of former military men before sacking them when it became clear they were not the yes-men he wanted (Fleishman, 2018).
A more recent Jackson biographer, Jon Meacham, sees many flaws in Jackson, yet still proclaims that “we live in the country he made, children of a distant and commanding father, a father long dead but always with us.” (2009, 361) This positive appraisal rests largely on his view that Jackson broadened democracy. A PBS documentary entitled Andrew Jackson: Good, Evil and The Presidency (2008) also credited him with expanding the electorate. However, the enlargement of the franchise for white male voters occurred before Jackson became president. In 1828 just three states still had an electoral property qualification. He did, however, persuade that new electorate to turn out in far greater numbers than in 1824 to his great advantage (Inskeep, 2016). By contrast, Trump and various Republican state governors have been complicit in voter suppression in key states. In a rare moment of candour, Trump declared of a Democrat proposal to allow greater postal balloting, “They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” (Ford, 2020) In pursuit of this attempt to damp down voter participation, Trump has also been willing to cripple the the US Postal Service by withholding funding to ensure that it cannot handle an anticipated huge increase in mail-in ballots on account of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Where Jackson and Trump converge on constitutional issues is both men’s attempts to increase the power of the executive over the legislature. Jackson vetoed Congress twelve times, more than all his predecessors combined. He also insisted that Congress should consult with the president before instituting any legislation, something never done before, on the grounds that the president was more representative of the people because he was elected by the whole nation (Meacham, 2009). Trump has attempted the same thing but by means of cowing the Republican Party, threatening to remove his support for Senators and Congressional Representatives unless they do exactly what he wants (Wehle, 2020). Similarly, during the Covid-19 crisis he has tried to dictate policy on lockdowns to state governors, tweeting out exhortations to his supporters to defy those who ignore his calls for reopening the economy (Gawthorpe, 2020). This runs contrary to Jackson’s belief in upholding states’ rights. Although he was a defender of the integrity of the Union, Jackson was determined to ensure that the institution of slavery was protected, justifying its existence by emphasising the right of individual states to decide whether or not to allow it within their borders, thereby preventing any Federal legislation from Washington attempting to abolish or limit it. He was quite happy for South Carolina officials to break Federal law by interfering with the mail and burning abolitionist pamphlets sent from the North. Perhaps therefore, a point of similarity between Jackson and Trump must be conceded over their indifference to the integrity of the US Postal Service.
The American Lion versus the Bull in a China Shop
Meacham (2009) contends that Jackson was a principled idealist and there seems no doubt that his patriotic, arch-nationalist love of country was sincere. That notwithstanding, the highest virtue for Jackson was loyalty to himself. He judged that those who opposed him, such as John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay, were not just wrong but enemies of the people, a term employed by Trump against numerous political foes and the media (Smith, 2019). Jackson was a short-tempered man who held a grudge tenaciously, and whose moral code was centred upon an inflexible concept of honour which often led him into personal violence in his early life and propelled him sometimes into ill-advised dogmatism (Wyatt-Brown, 1997). Yet he had many friends and inspired a loyalty which was based on admiration of his sense of justice.
Trump’s character is far more dysfunctional, he is a serial liar, and his increasingly bombastic nationalism is essentially a projection of his own narcissism. He too demands loyalty, but unlike Jackson he rarely returns it. Allies pander to him for advancement or fear of falling out of favour. He is the archetypal bully. Jackson was an acerbic and aggressive character, but he could control his temper, unlike the thin-skinned Trump who is gratuitously abusive even to allies and colleagues. Jackson could be devious and less than truthful, but he was not a pathological liar. Innumerable accounts have catalogued Trump’s casual and unreflective telling of falsehoods. The Washington Post (2020) kept a record of these and revealed that in the first three years of his presidency he made 16,241 false or misleading statements, or 15 per day.
Omarosa Newman, who worked with him for 15 years on The Apprentice, as an aide in his presidential campaign, and as Director of Communications in the White House in 2017, recounts in her book, Unhinged (2018), that Trump in office became increasingly erratic, unstable and paranoid. She also alleges that Trump is a racist who was covert about his dislike for black people, but quite open about his hatred of Muslims. It is clear he despises Mexicans and other Central-American peoples, as well as those who live in African “shit-hole” nations. Among his supporters whom he refuses to condemn are white supremacists, neo-Nazis and Klan members, many of whom would love to see an America just like the one Jackson inhabited (Inskeep, 2016). His birtherism views on Obama and his refusal to condemn similar false claims against Kamala Harris plus his attempts to keep black people out of his buildings in the 1970s confirm that he holds such prejudice (Coates, 2017). Not only does he share racist views with Andrew Jackson the slave-holder and slaughterer of Native Americans, but both men owe their election to a white electorate. In every category of income and education, both male and female, Trump won a majority of the white vote in the 2016 election (Coates, 2018, 346).
Trump’s hatred and envy of Obama is far more extreme than Jackson’s dislike of Adams, and it seems some of his policy is not based on any program, ideology or political preference, but rather a crusade to utterly destroy his predecessor’s legacy (Coates, 2017). This includes a bizarre first-day-in-office rant about the crowd at his inauguration being larger than Obama’s, trashing the nuclear deal with Iran, withdrawing from the Paris climate-change agreement, rolling back environmental protections, attempting to demolish Obamacare, and displaying an obsessive compulsion to badmouth him repeatedly (Shpancer, 2019).
While Jackson was a bona fide war hero, Trump is an alleged draft-dodger excused military service during the Vietnam War on the spurious grounds of bone-spurs in his heels which subsequently miraculously vanished (Cummings, 2019). Jackson became wealthy, but he could rightly claim to be a self-made man, a characteristic high in the pantheon of populist virtues. Trump claims also to be self-made, but this is emphatically false. He was “propped up by his wealthy father well into middle age” (Shpancer, 2019), receiving the equivalent of $413 million from him over the years according to a New York Times investigation in 2018. Furthermore his business acumen has been qustioned by many – five bankruptcies, a failed casino, and massive debts to such as Deutsche Bank. His concealment of his wealth and his chronic exaggeration of his worth speak of someone who is actually a fairly inept businessman.
The Foreign Policy Red Herring
The case for seeing Trump as a Jacksonian because of the similarities of their position on foreign policy and America’s role in the world arises largely out of the influential writings of Walter Russell Mead, a conservative-inclined commentator who holds populism in esteem despite recognising its shortcomings, who views Jackson as a towering figure, and who is critically supportive of Trump (Glasser, 2018). In his seminal work, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World (2001), he asserts that Jackson was one of America’s greatest presidents and that the 1812 Battle of New Orleans in which American forces inflicted a humiliating defeat on the British was “perhaps the most decisive battle in the shaping of the modern world between Trafalgar and Stalingrad”, adding that “every political party since his presidency has drawn on the symbolism, the institutions, and the instruments of power that Jackson pioneered.” (221) He argues that understanding American foreign policy is not possible without seeing Jackson’s enduring influence as fundamental.
Mead has created a methodological model for understanding the dynamics and aims of US foreign policy based on categorising all presidencies into one of four models – Hamiltonian, Wilsonian, Jeffersonian and Jacksonian. According to him:
Hamiltonians regard a strong alliance between the national government and big business as the key both to domestic stability and to effective action abroad, and they have long focused on the nation’s need to be integrated into the global economy on favorable terms. Wilsonians believe that the United States has both a moral obligation and an important national interest in spreading American democratic and social values throughout the world, creating a peaceful international community that accepts the rule of law. Jeffersonians hold that American foreign policy should be less concerned about spreading democracy abroad than about safeguarding it at home; they have historically been skeptical about Hamiltonian and Wilsonian policies that involve the United States with unsavory allies abroad or that increase the risks of war. Finally, a large populist school I call Jacksonian believes that the most important goal of the U.S. government in both foreign and domestic policy should be the physical security and the economic well-being of the American people. “Don’t Tread on Me!” warned the rattlesnake on the Revolutionary battle flag; Jacksonians believe that the United States should not seek out foreign quarrels, but when other nations start wars with the United States, Jacksonian opinion agrees with Gen. Douglas MacArthur that “There is no substitute for victory.”(xvii)
Many subsequent commentators have bought into this formula and it is plain that Trump does not fit any of the first three. However, that does not mean he therefore must be a Jacksonian, if only because the model is overly rigid. Lyndon Johnson for example, displayed political proclivities drawn from all of the models as formulated by Mead.
Mead is on fairly uncontentious ground when describing the values of Jacksonians in the Jackson era, and the similarities with modern-day populists – scorn for perceived elites, hostility to minorities, a visceral nationalism, a deep attachment to guns, and an ethos of individualistic freedom. He clearly admires what he describes as Jacksonian characteristics, seeing them as almost synonymous with being a good American in a long passage which charts the apparent virtuousness of these loyal, truthful, honourable, family-loving, upstanding, independent-minded citizens, whose vices (including racism) are little more than an over-exuberant defence of their community ideals (229-35). He then transposes these values on to foreign policy motivations among his modern-day Jacksonians – a simple, self-interested, morally indifferent, America-First doctrine which eschews international bodies like the UN or the WHO, which does not wish to export American democratic ideals, and which believes that international life is intrinsically anarchic and self-interested. While these observations on contemporary American populism may be accurate, Mead skips entirely relating it to what Jackson believed or did in his eight years of foreign relations; Jackson’s foreign policy is not mentioned at all in the book.
The reality was that Jackson engaged in no foreign wars, did not actively support the white-settler secessionist insurrection in Texas against Mexico, ordered actions to tackle piracy, and settled a compensation claim against France. Beyond those, Jackson’s foreign policy amounted only to the negotiation of trade treaties with a handful of other nations (Meacham, 2009). It is therefore impossible to compare Jackson and Trump’s foreign policies directly. It can only be done by inference from the more generalised populist beliefs of both men.
Writing immediately after Trump’s election, Mathew Fay (2016) describes Trump’s view on world politics as a zero-sum game conducted in a purely transactional manner. Trump cannot seem to understand that multilateral institutions might be of mutual benefit to all who participate in them, hence his readiness to threaten NATO members as well as the UN. When combined with a prickly ego which sees any disagreement as a slight on the USA and himself, this sets a very low bar for striking out against those not toeing the American line. Fay’s article discusses all this using Mead’s framework of four presidential types, but he too does not question whether it is even possible to discern what a Jacksonian foreign-policy trope actually was.
There are few examples where a direct comparison can be made, or even where a consistent foreign-policy stance can be discerned in Jackson’s presidency. The early 19th century was a far less globalised place and the USA was isolationist not so much by choice but by geography and the state of transport and communications technology. Only on the issue of tariffs can we see something which figured significantly in each man’s presidency. In Jackson’s case it was the Tariff of 1828 which he supported and which was set extremely high to protect America’s nascent industries. In the resultant Nullification Crisis of 1832 when South Carolina threatened to secede from the USA, Jackson threatened military force against that state, but simultaneously drastically diluted the import tariff which had instigated the crisis. Jackson had only backed the tariff to win the 1828 election, and was not actually in favour of it, believing it undermined states’ rights and therefore indirectly imperilled slavery (Remini, 1988). Trump however, takes a very different view of tariffs. In office, they have become a major weapon in his America-First conduct of foreign affairs, imposing them on China, the European Union, Canada, India and others, often in a haphazard and impulsive fashion. Despite causing domestic hardship and creating the equivalent of a huge tax rise for Americans, Trump has persisted with this tactic, implying falsely that the cost is borne by China and other foreign nations rather than by US consumers and businesses (Amiti et al, 2019).
Mead (xvii) says that, “Jacksonians believe that the United States should not seek out foreign quarrels.” It is clear that Trump does not cleave to that view. His first three years in office saw him insult, provoke, threaten or antagonise Mexico, Iran, Venezuela, Haiti, Pakistan, China, Montenegro(!), Canada and most of the European Union, not to mention the “shit-hole” countries of Africa and Central America (Kendi, 2019).
There seems to be just one comparison which shows equivalence between Jackson and Trump which is on the borderline of foreign policy in the former’s case. Mead says, “The honor code [of Jacksonians] requires that we live up to our commitments. We have obligations to those we have promised to protect.” (249) The grubby betrayal of America’s staunch allies, the Kurds, in northern Syria in 2019 in the face of Turkish aggression illustrates that that claim of righteousness is not fulfilled by Trump. There is a similarity in the way Jackson also betrayed his allies, the Cherokees, who had fought alongside him in the Creek War. Despite their loyalty and settled farming lifestyle, they were ruthlessly evicted from their lands in Georgia by the 1830 Indian Removal Act and made to march 1,000 miles westwards to spuriously guaranteed lands, in the course of which thousands died (Wishart, 1995).
Stephen Sestanovich (2017) sums it up succinctly when he says that in his electoral foreign-policy pronouncements, “Trump rode to victory as the candidate who promised to do both more and less than Obama… proposing a more hopped-up foreign-policy activism – and a fuller kind of disengagement… He sensed that the public wanted relief from the burdens of global leadership without losing the thrill of nationalist self-assertion”. His barely-thought-through bombastic nationalism, emphasising the threat from the “otherness” of foreign peoples, outweighed the incoherence and impossibility of his contradictory promises. The only consistency was his implacable, visceral opposition to everything that Obama had done or supported. Jackson may have hated John Quincy Adams, but he did not formulate foreign policy just to spite him.
Score Card
Jon Herbert (2019) argues that, although Trump is an extraordinary president, his is not an extraordinary presidency; it is a very ordinary one. He has displayed an extreme volatility, shown himself to be unprecedentedly dishonest, boastful and self-regarding, created permanent instability in the staffing of the Federal government, and disparaged allies both domestic and foreign in a manner never seen before. However, like many presidents before him, he has achieved little in office, especially after the Democrats gained control of the House of Representatives. What few measures he has succeeded in implementing are classically Republican, such as tax cuts for the wealthy and placing conservatives on the Supreme Court. “The notion that Trump is fighting the corner of the common man in Washington is fanciful. The alleged tribune of the working class has morphed into a classic Republican plutocrat, with the richest cabinet in history, cutting the taxes of the wealthy and the healthcare and social provisions of the poor.” (217) Trump has been much more successful in undermining US institutions and international agreements to which the USA has been a partner. He has also created animosity and division within the country not seen since the Vietnam War, or possibly the Civil War. Bipartisanship in government has been wounded, although not yet fatally. By his personal behaviour he has coarsened political dialogue and created a climate of increasing fear and loathing which he has deliberately stoked for his own ends. The greatest casualty may well be his utter disregard for truthfulness.
By contrast, Jackson achieved a great deal domestically (not always necessarily for the good) – paying off the National Debt, replacing the Second Bank of the United States with a series of private state banks, preventing the secession of South Carolina, seizing vast areas of native American lands, and overseeing the admission of Arkansas and Michigan to the Union. He encouraged and consolidated greater popular electoral participation, helped found the Democratic Party, and created the system of rotation of government offices. He too created division in the USA, but he did not actively seek to fan the flames, nor was he personally abusive as a deliberate tactic.
Conclusion
Jackson’s reputation and the most widely accepted view of what Jacksonianism comprises is a historical and political construct which has been bolstered by his admirers and by those who would like to ride on the coat-tails of a perceived great president. Whether you believe that Trump is a Jacksonian depends on what you define Jacksonianism to be or to mean. In the classic Western film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a newspaper reporter is researching a popular and famous senator’s heroic but actually untrue part in the saving of a small town from banditry many years previously. When he is told the story as it really happened, he decides not to publish it because the myth is an uplifting tale of moral righteousness, saying, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Many Americans view Jackson this way; they embrace the positive symbolism which he is held to epitomise, particularly his role in expanding American democracy.
If you accept the myth in all its democracy-enhancing splendour, then Donald Trump falls far short of the greatness and nobility of Jacksonianism. If, however, you compare him with the historical Andrew Jackson, his populism fits somewhat better with that Jacksonianism. Yet even then it is a poor match. In the history of populist phenomena, there is always the question of whether charismatic leaders are operating from a position of conviction or using it as a strategic vehicle for obtaining power. Jackson appears as one part opportunist to two parts true believer. His least populist aspect was a refusal to contemplate letting ordinary people have any part in policy-making – there would be no direct democracy on his watch. Trump is all opportunist and hypocrite. He has no respect or affection for the common people, seeing them as electoral fodder and regarding democracy as a means to power and not a worthy end in itself. He never was a genuine champion of the powerless. This was a fabrication designed to benefit his political ambition, just like his transparently false attempts at portraying himself as an authentic Christian to gain the support of Evangelicals.
If you compare them as people using moral and ethical criteria, neither is a particularly savoury man, but Trump appears to have no redeeming features – narcissistic, uncompassionate, dishonest, racist, Islamophobic, sexist, ignorant, hypocritical, abusive, probably sociopathic and maybe even solipsistic. Perhaps Mead needs to add a fifth category to his presidential model – Trumpian – and hope that it remains a one-man field.
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