Donald Trump like Andrew Jackson: "The charismatic, amoral, institution-destroying firebrands of U.S. history"

[lpetrich]

Book review of The Demagogue?s Playbook: The Battle for American Democracy from the Founders to Trump by Eric A. Posner - The Washington Post

Now Eric Posner, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, centers his analysis on demagogues. In his new book, “The Demagogue’s Playbook: The Battle for American Democracy From the Founders to Trump,” Posner takes us through the dangers of the charismatic, amoral, institution-destroying firebrands of American history to help us understand the specific threat that President Trump poses to the republic. His conclusion: Trump’s threat is a dire one.

...
Fearing that demagogues would use democratic structures to manipulate the public to lift them into power, the founders built an elaborate set of impediments to a pure democracy ... “For the Founders, nothing could be more obvious than that educated, experienced people should lead the government,” Posner observes. “The Founders created a ‘natural aristocracy’ of ‘virtue and talents,’ as Jefferson called it: rule by the elite.”

Since the nation’s founding, these bulwarks against the rise of a ruling demagogue have been dismantled, bit by bit, usually for very good reasons. The ideal of popular self-government always sat uneasily alongside the notion of a ruling natural aristocracy, particularly when the elite discredited themselves or abused their power.

...
Demagogues were part of the political scene — Louisiana governor and senator Huey Long, Mississippi governor and senator Theodore Bilbo, Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy, to name a few — but only one, by Posner’s criteria, made it to the White House before 2016. Andrew Jackson was “a White Christian nationalist” with “a serious authoritarian and violent streak,” who had fought duels, beaten enslaved people, imprisoned a federal judge, slaughtered Native Americans and thrilled his base, Posner writes. In office he destroyed the independent civil service in favor of a spoils system that lasted for a half-century; crushed the independent central bank which, Posner argues, set the financial system back decades; and presided over a political system that swapped aristocrats for party bosses, who controlled the selection of presidential candidates and the spoils. The presidency was left diminished, and common people, instead of being empowered, found themselves under a new form of elite control.

Assessing the presidents who followed Jackson, Posner finds no demagogues until the arrival of our current chief executive. Trump gained the presidency, Posner writes, because conditions were propitious for such a candidate: The ruling elites had thoroughly discredited themselves through their mismanagement of the Iraq War, the eruption of the 2008 financial crisis, including the unpopular bailouts for those who caused it, and the long stagnation of wages for most Americans. Meanwhile, the final safeguard that might have stopped Trump — elite control of the party nomination process — had collapsed over the previous generation.

 

[ideologyhunter]

How #7 and #45 are alike:
Crazy temper
Lack of education
Nutty hair (although AJ's is cooler -- see the $20 bill)
Battled people of color on the southern border (although AJ did it in person)
Violent streak (although only one put his life on the line)
Both had a 19th Century understanding of science, civil liberties, gender equality, and humanity.
Both would think Pocahontas is a funny putdown.
If you're a literate American, you probably look forward to visiting both of their graves.

How They're Different
#7 mourned his deceased wife to the end of his days -- #45 goes to auctions in Bratislava for "fresh trim"
The Hermitage is architecturally pleasing and didn't have a roach problem.
#7 had a facial scar from a British sword; #45 reportedly has whip marks on his scrotum from a Moscow soiree
#7 sent the Cherokee on the Trail of Tears; #45 pretty much did that to everyone in all 50 states and the territories.
#7 was Old Hickory, #45 is just an old limp dick (I know, not funny, just true)
There is exactly one known photographic image of #7; #45 documents every goddamn moment of his life and the workings of his addled brainpan.