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DEL.ICIO.USHistory Corner: Welcome back, Old Hickory
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
One of the peculiar characteristics of a big national election is that in their aftermath, the standings in the past presidential seniors tour get rearranged.
Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980 did wonders for Calvin Coolidge, whose reputation had languished for a good 50 years. William McKinley’s popular historical status increased considerably after the 2000 election, thanks largely to Bush strategist Karl Rove, a self-described “McKinley enthusiast.”
This year some Democrat is sure to move up. Speaking of John Tester, Montana’s newly elected Democratic senator who operates a family farm, a friend told the New York Times last week that he “brings an old-fashioned, Jeffersonian ideal about being tied to the land.” Tester himself mentioned FDR as an inspiration.
But those guys are already way up on the charts. For the big move up in historical standing, our money’s on another Democratic friend of the small farmer and wage earner (and oppressor of Cherokees), Andrew Jackson.
You can find the definitive chapter on this subject in “Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America,” by the newly elected Democratic senator from Virginia, James Webb.
Jackson, our first president of Scots-Irish descent, has gotten short shrift, Webb writes, because there were no wars or big leaps forward, like the Louisiana Purchase, while he was president. But the former secretary of the Navy and prolific author argues that Jackson actually presided over a pivotal time in the nation’s history, and “rewrote the book on American political leadership just as surely as Nobel laureate Ernest Hemingway remade the narrative form of the novel.”
Jackson would have gotten on well with the Blue Dog Democrats whom Newt Gingrich last week said were the new center of political gravity in Congress. So if you want to stay current, brush up on the Second National Bank veto.
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By uncle jessie
November 14, 2006 2:27 PM | Link to this
God Hates Trash, God loves Rednecks, why did Jesus save the adulterous woman from Pharisees if he didn’t. Come on down to the Redneck Games, Possum Hollow and Jaybird Springs them RedNecks will show you a good time and open yore eyes just like Mr. Drysdale.