President Andrew Jackson
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President Andrew Jackson may be called the first Democrat, the first President to run and be elected on the ticket of the Democratic Party--now the oldest continually operating political party in the world. (This credit might alternatively be given to Thomas Jefferson, since the political grouping he represented-ironically called Republican--was the direct ancestor of the later Democratic Party. But the party continuity from Jefferson to Jackson is much weaker than the subsequent continuity of the Democratic Party from Jackson's day to our own.) In a broader sense, he may be called the first democrat: the first political leader, perhaps, since ancient Athens to stand for direct majoritarian democracy rather than a "mixed" republic in which democratic elements were intermixed with oligarchic elements. Modern times have not been sympathetic to Jackson. His democratic values are now taken for granted in American politics, so that how new and radical they were in his own day is forgotten. His famous Inaugural celebration is usually seen through the eyes of horrified Northeastern blue-blood contemporaries, and thus presented not as a celebration of the people's rule but as a redneck party. His economic policies, rooted in laissez-faire and encapsulated in his struggle against the Second Bank of the United States, are to us in part obscure (who today cares one way or another about the Second Bank?) and in part contradictory. Today we associate laissez-faire economics wit
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lves (as the name makes clear) envisioned as somewhat analogous to the College of Cardinals which elects Popes. Under Chief Justice John Marshall, the Supreme Court -the least democratic of the three branches, made up as it was of lifetime appointees--established itself as gatekeeper of the Constitution.
Not only was the original theory of the Constitution thus far less democratic than we think of it as today, but the well-to-do and better-educated segment of the population had no hesitation in publicly calling democracy mob rule, and in insisting on a privileged standing for the wealthy and allegedly wise. Today, no politician who wished to continue his career in office would say such things in public. In the 1820s, Whig politicians had no hesitation in saying them.
Yet the Revolution had let the cat of popular rule out of the bag, and it could not be gotten in again. The franchise under state constitutions was steadily enlarged, and popular election of Presidential Electors became the established rule, with the functions of the Electoral College quickly reduced to its present limited and confusing role. The "better" elements of society might be horrified by the election of Andrew Jackson, but he won in spite of them, an
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Approximate Word count = 1571
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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