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« Back to The Life of President Andrew Jackson, Part Two main page    Transcript for: The Life of President Andrew Jackson, Part TwoTHINK TANK WITH BEN WATTENBERG#1304 Andrew Jackson Pt. 2 FEED DATE: FEBRUARY 10, 2005 Robert Remini and Harry Watson OPENING BILLBOARD: Funding for this program is provided by...(Pfizer) At Pfizer, we’re spending over five billion dollars looking for the cures of the future. We have 12,000 scientists and health experts who firmly believe the only thing incurable is our passion. Pfizer, life is our life’s work. Additional funding is provided by the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. MR. WATTENBERG: Hello I’m Ben Wattenberg… Most Americans only know of Andrew Jackson as the man whose face adorns this 20 Dollar bill. But during his two terms as President, from 1829 to 1837, Jackson left a distinctive stamp on issues we care about today, such as states’ rights, American foreign policy, and the role of the executive branch. His fiery political rhetoric and controversial policies continue to inspire modern politicians and debate among historians. Who was Andrew Jackson? Why is he still a controversial figure, and how did he change the Presidency? To find out, Think Tank is joined by... Robert Remini, Professor Emeritus of History and Humanities at the University of Illinois at Chicago and author of many books on President Jackson including The Life of Andrew Jackson. and... Harry Watson, Director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and author of Andrew Jackson vs. Henry Clay. The Topic Before the House: Andrew Jackson, Part Two... This Week on Think Tank. MR. WATTENBERG: Robert Remini, Harry Watson, welcome to Think Tank. At the time of his presidency, America was still a very new country and you keep running into in the books, 'well this was the first time that such and such happened'; the first pocket veto; the first – maybe you can mention a couple of other things. And it was the first time – I mean the – the thing that is famed in American historical law lore is the so-called people’s inaugural where – and you might give us a little word portrait of what’s going on there. MR. WATSON: Alright. You want to start? MR. REMINI: Well, the American people loved him. They trusted him. They made him president and he had no more credentials to be president than I do. I mean, you compare him to his predecessors. All he did was kill people. Killed Indians and the British, which the American people liked. But he did one thing for them that they could never forget and that is that they gave him the pride of being an American. That Americans had proved that they could be sovereign and independent and stand up to the greatest power in the world and defeat them. MR. WATTENBERG: Now, tell me about this first – this people’s inaugural. What happened? MR. WATSON: After – after the speech was made and everybody went back to the White House and it had been the custom that the newly inaugurated president would show up in the White House and have a reception for anybody who wanted to shake his hand. That was all established. But in the past, everybody sort of - the ordinary folk felt instinctively that that wasn’t really their party and they hung back and the only people who came were the established ladies and gentlemen. But when Jackson came in, everybody thought they had the right to come. And they just packed into the White House. Men and women, boys, girls, servants... MR. WATTENBERG: Got pretty boozed up, also. MR. WATSON: Black, white, everybody just came in and the people who reported were scandalized that all sorts of folks who had no business being in the White House were there. MR. WATTENBERG: And what were the estimates? Fifteen to twenty thousand – something like that? MR. WATSON: Well, nobody ever counted but that’s... MR. REMINI: They estimated twenty thousand. But not in the White House. But that’s the inaugural. MR. WATTENBERG: And the myth was that he shook everybody’s hand, which doesn’t sound right. MR. WATSON: No, he didn’t do that. He couldn’t have. MR. WATTENBERG: He couldn’t have. MR. WATSON: As a matter of fact he was all – they – his aids thought he was going to be crushed to death so they had to scurry him out of the room and the only way they could get the place empty was to carry the punch out on the lawn. MR. WATTENBERG: And this continued throughout his presidency, that people could sort of walk in unannounced and say... MR. WATSON: Yes, they could. There was never any... MR. WATTENBERG: ... 'hi, Mr. President.' MR. WATSON: There was never a riot like the first time. But yes, the White House was open and you could come in and interrupt the president and it was a very hard... MR. REMINI: Not only Jackson, but... MR. WATSON: Yes, that was – that was all true. MR. REMINI: ...his successors. MR. WATTENBERG: It’s said that Jackson was against big business. Does that hold up? MR. WATSON: Yes. I think that’s true, yes. MR. REMINI: I do not. MR. WATTENBERG: You do not. MR. REMINI: No. MR. WATSON: My – my feeling is that Jackson wanted desperately to maintain the independence of the average American citizen. That would be a white male farmer most of the time. MR. WATTENBERG: Right. MR. WATSON: And he thought that the growth of huge corporations, especially banks, would create an economy in which those men could not maintain their independence; that they would be swamped by currency manipulations that the banks would carry on among themselves and that they would somehow or another be forced into tenancy or into wage labor or whatnot. And of course that is exactly what happened. We don’t have very many small farmers in America anymore and most Americans have a job in which they have to take orders from a boss. That was an anathema to Jackson because he thought that such people could never be truly independent and you couldn’t really have a republic. MR. WATTENBERG: So in that sense he was sort of a Jeffersonian; not a Hamiltonian. MR. WATSON: Oh, absolutely. That’s my opinion, yes. Absolutely. MR. REMINI: I think that the mistake that Harry makes - if you will excuse me - is that you see what the result was, therefore, it must have been intended and it wasn’t. That’s not what he was about. What he is about is corporate greed, corporate fraud of men using their money and the influence that comes from it for their own selfish purposes. MR. WATTENBERG: Which is another issue that resonates through the ages in America. MR. REMINI: And we have it today. And this is really what he’s opposed to. To go beyond that and say 'well, therefore he is opposed to business'... MR. WATTENBERG: That we want free enterprise but we want to demonize the entrepreneur. MR. WATSON: Right, well... MR. REMINI: And you see that they use government in order to achieve more money and their own interests and laws that protect them and guarantee them their profits. And Jackson’s position was the government has to be an honest broker between all the varying groups that you have in society. That’s the role of government. MR. WATSON: And see I think by looking at Jackson’s words, especially in his farewell address after he’s been through the presidency and he’s looked back and he’s trying to think about the lessons that he’s learned, he says these moneyed corporations are going to be disastrous to the republic. And he doesn’t make a distinction between the greedy ones and the unselfish ones; he just says that they’re natural tendency is to... MR. REMINI: No, because his experience has been that the ones that you’re dealing with – they’re always naturally going to try to use their influence, their money for... MR. WATSON: I think there’s a long track record MR. REMINI: ... their interests that have nothing to do with the public’s interest and the men in Washington are supposed to be concerned with the public’s welfare. MR. WATTENBERG: Getting back to the bank just for a second. How would he have felt to see his portrait on a bill issued by a federal...? MR. WATSON: Appalled. Appalled. He wanted to make it illegal for the bank – for the federal government to accept any paper bill less than twenty dollars. MR. WATTENBERG: And you don’t have the Federal Reserve being formed until almost – not a hundred years later but... under Wilson, right? MR. WATSON: No. Right. Exactly. So the value of a twenty dollar bill now is of course much less than it was in his day, so Jackson really didn’t believe that the twenty dollar bills that we have should even exist, and here we put him on one. MR. REMINI: See, he believes in hard money. Money you can trust. The kind of money – gold and silver - that you can’t really fiddle with its value. Where with paper, these banks were issuing paper that were worthless. MR. WATTENBERG: Harry, you said that Jackson – that we live in a world today that despite Jacksonian democracy and everything else, that was – would have been a world that Jackson opposed. MR. WATSON: Yes, I think that’s true. We live in a world in which most people have an employer. MR. WATTENBERG: Hamiltonian world. MR. WATSON: Yes, exactly. We live in a world with huge corporations; we have – live in a world with huge banks; we live in a globalized economy; the individual is rarely in charge of his own little business or his own little farm and this was the kind of world that Jackson thought could never be truly democratic. MR. REMINI: And as a result you have Enron and you have all kinds of corporate fraud. And you have a constant arrest, indictment and imprisonment of men who think that because they have positions of power they can get away with defrauding the American people. And that is the danger. MR. WATTENBERG: Getting back to... MR. WATSON: In addition... MR. WATTENBERG: I’m sorry. Go ahead. MR. WATSON: Let me just add something, that in addition to individual corporate criminals, I think Jackson would probably say that the electoral process is corrupted by the power of corporations giving money and... MR. REMINI: Yes, I think so. MR. WATSON: ... and that sort of thing, so that – or controlling the media, or whatnot. In other words, it’s not a sort of simple relationship between the individual voter and the individual office seeker. There are all these powerful institutions that kind of get in between and muddy the waters. And so Jackson felt that in that situation - the monopolies he would have called them – were actually running the show. MR. REMINI: And look at the elections today. Look how much money is involved for anyone to be elected and the national... MR. WATTENBERG: But it tends to cancel... MR. REMINI: ...it runs to the hundreds of millions of dollars. MR. WATTENBERG: ...and it tends to cancel each other out because it’s so large on both sides. I mean... MR. WATSON: Well... MR. WATTENBERG: Except for a third-party candidate. MR. WATSON: Yes and I think Jackson would have said that somehow - but if you’re in bed with these companies, then whether you’re a democrat or republican, you’re anti-democratic with a small 'd'. So, he would have – Now, I don’t know what Jackson would say if we suddenly brought him to the President and asked him who to vote for. But I do know that the – the system that we have as a whole is something that he opposed. Now, obviously, there are a lot of things that Jackson opposed that we ought to be in favor of. I don’t think we can have a world – we can’t run the tape back and create a world in which everyone is a yeoman farmer. I mean that’s – that’s just not going to happen. MR. WATTENBERG: I mean... MR. WATSON: So, I’m not saying that just because Jackson was against it that somehow we’ve got to turn the clock back. But if you want to call it like it was, then Jackson was against the ... MR. REMINI: I think what is more important for Jackson was the role of government in this whole system. And when government is used as it always is by those who have money, it’s corrupting the system and he wants the government to be honest. And that’s what he’s fighting for. MR. WATTENBERG: There was a quote from a New York merchant, June of 1833 and it says, 'No man ever lived in the country to whom the country was so much indebted, talk of him as a second Washington, it won’t do now; Washington was only the first Jackson.' MR. WATSON: [LAUGHING] He was a very unusual New York merchant. Most of them couldn’t stand Jackson. MR. REMINI: That shows you how much he was beloved... MR. WATSON: Yes. MR. REMINI: ...by the people then. Even Parton says that. Jack – Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Franklin are nothing compared to what this man did. That’s the importance of his role in the – the battle of New Orleans... MR. WATTENBERG: How... Mr. REMIN: ... and then in his presidency what he did, he changed the whole relationship between the president and the Congress. MR. WATTENBERG: He was big on the use of the veto, wasn’t he? MR. REMINI: As an instrument for the public good. MR. WATTENBERG: Again, there are so many things that are – he was the first president upon whom an assassination was attempted. MR. REMINI: Right. MR. WATTENBERG: But this veto thing gives him... MR. REMINI: Powers that he shouldn’t have. MR. WATTENBERG: Great power that he should not have? MR. REMINI: That’s what Webster and Clay would say. The legislative process is lodged in the Congress. The President is now saying unless I give – you find out what I want, I can veto any bill for whatever reason. MR. WATTENBERG: But that’s what they... MR. REMINI: In the past it was only if the bill was unconstitutional. Now he is saying if I think it is not in the public interest, I’m going to veto it, which means that they have to come to him and say, 'Well what do you think about this bill? Would you sign it if we passed it as it is?' 'No; it should be changed this way, that way and the other way.' That makes him a co-legislator, and that they resented...Webster, Clay and all the other... MR. WATSON: That’s routine now, of course. MR. REMINI: But he really strengthens the presidency to make him the first among equals. To be the head of the government; to be - to become the leader in determining national policy. MR. WATTENBERG: What does Jacksonian democracy mean? I mean it’s a phrase you hear all the time. And he’s regarded as, by I guess in the second tier of great American presidents. MR. WATSON: Well, I think Jacksonian democracy is his insistence on the equality of all the people he regarded as citizens and... MR. WATTENBERG: It’s highly populist, isn’t it? MR. WATSON: Absolutely. And he’s determined to have the people – the ordinary voter in his perspective to be the governing perspective in the country. Now, having said that, you have to run quickly to say, not all Americans were in that – in that circle. Obviously Blacks weren’t; obviously Indians weren’t; women weren’t. And Jackson was inclined to believe that the people who disagreed with him weren’t either. But he certainly wouldn’t have said that formally. MR. WATSON: Jackson said it best. He said, 'The people are sovereign; their will is absolute. The majority rules.' MR. WATTENBERG: Let me ask – and now, today we still have just to try to understand the politics briefly – democrats have the Jefferson- Jackson Day dinners; that’s how high in the pantheon. How did the politics say – he was a democrat? MR. WATSON: Oh, absolutely. Yes. Yes. MR. WATTENBERG: And his opponents were... MR. WATSON: Well, they first called themselves national republicans and then wigs. MR. WATTENBERG: And then back ultimately to republican. MR. WATSON: The wig party fell apart in the 1850s and then the republican party came into existence really as a brand new thing. It had wigs in it; it had ex-democrats in it; it was really – it wasn’t a simple reincarnation of the wig party. MR. WATTENBERG: Alright. Let’s try to wrap this up. Suppose somebody says to you – begin with you Bob; we’ll go to you, Harry – what is Andrew Jackson’s legacy? We talk a lot about – Clinton talked a lot about my legacy this, my legacy that. MR. REMINI: Well, that he represents a new kind of democratic government in which the people are sovereign and that they rule. He is a man and - I’d like to get this in; it’s not quite related – he’s the only president in our history who paid off the national debt. We didn’t owe anybody a cent. MR. WATTENBERG: Another first. Another first. MR WATSON: And only. And only. [Laughter] MR. REMINI: And that’s saying something. And what’s really important, I think he can appeal today to both conservatives and to liberals. He appeals to conservatives because he is opposed to government spending; he believes in state’s rights; he believes in what we would regard as the conservative agenda for the operation of the government. At the same time, of course, he personally is doing things that is increasing the strength of the presidency. And he appeals to liberals pretty much in that he fought against the whole idea of the rich having an influence and power beyond their numbers, that really represents their wealth and their position and their background where he is in favor of an equality so it includes all people. MR. WATTENBERG: The idea in 2004 that two men from Yale, each member of skull and bones would not be exactly the way he would have liked to see the country turn out. MR. WATSON: No, indeed. No, indeed. Jackson was an original American populist. He believed profoundly in democracy for those that he regarded as worthy of it and he insisted that the ordinary American should rule the country, or that ordinary Americans in their – in their strength. MR. REMINI: He represents a transition of people who were colonists who have suddenly become Americans. Take a look at George Washington’s picture. Here you find a man in britches, in silk stockings, in a powdered wig; and then look at a picture of Andrew Jackson – I might also mentioned the ruffled shirt and such – Jackson in his trousers, tie and such. It’s a different American that has suddenly emerged after the War of 1812. And I think many of the characteristics that we would regard as American today, whatever they are, begins in the Jacksonian period. And he is a representative of that, being as the self-made man and being someone who thinks of himself as an American; not as a Virginian; not as a Tennessean; not as a Massachusetts man, which I think they did early on. MR. WATTENBERG: And yet of course we don’t know where he would have come out... MR. WATSON: We don’t know. MR. WATTENBERG: ... on the Civil War, which was the issue that... MR. REMINI: I think he would have been with Lincoln. He loved the union. MR. WATTENBERG: As a southerner he would have... MR. REMINI: As – he didn’t call himself a southerner; he called himself a westerner. He comes – he was born he claimed in South Carolina. North Carolina claims him, too. But he moved at the age of 21 to Tennessee and for the rest of his life he was a westerner. But he had – he is a slave-owner. See, they take the culture that they had. Henry Clay does the same thing. He moves – he’s born in Virginia, owns slaves, moves to Kentucky, owns slaves ’til the day he died. But is a westerner; not a southerner. MR. WATSON: Grant it that all this is speculation. My speculation is that Jackson would have sided with secession because when he denounced secession he always added a disclaimer saying 'now, while secession isn’t a legal remedy, we do have the right of revolution and when conditions become intolerable, people do have the right to revolt against their government.' So I think he would have used that escape clause... MR. REMINI: No, you’re guessing. MR. WATSON: I’m guessing? But you’re guessing, too, Bob. MR. REMINI: Let me give you Abraham Lincoln who in 1847 said 'any state has the right – any people have the right, if they feel they are oppressed and they vote to leave the union, may do so.' But when he becomes president in 1861, he reverses himself and says 'you can’t do it'; it’s a different story altogether. But earlier he took that position that any people – and we believe that – have the revolutionary right when they’re oppressed; when they are dealing with a – a tyrannical government, to overthrow it. And I think Jackson would have felt that you cannot do this in 1861, the same way that Abraham Lincoln had changed his mind. MR. WATSON: I’m skeptical, but you know, we’ll never know. MR. WATTENBERG: It’s been said, talking of his legacy, that the Americans loved his rhetoric but that his actual politics were not terribly popular. Correct or incorrect? MR. REMINI: Incorrect. MR. WATSON: No, I – I think that’s incorrect. MR. WATTENBERG: Incorrect. MR. WATSON: I think he was – I think his rhetoric was very popular and his policies were very popular. MR. REMINI: Look at the bank war. He ran – they ran on the bank issue in 1832 and he won. The American people took his side. MR. WATSON: And when Jackson left office his vice president ran on Jackson’s record and he won, too. MR. REMINI: And he was not popular. That’s Martin Van Buren. MR. WATSON: Martin Van Buren was not personally popular but he ran with Jackson’s blessing and that’s how he got elected. MR. WATTENBERG: Presidents -- It’s said that Jackson’s rhetoric for most every president that followed him – I mean, jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and... all picks up and follows this sort of rhetoric of Jackson’s. Is he that important? MR. WATSON: I think he really makes a difference. He really does. And you can see it in the bank veto and you can see it in the farewell address. Particularly in those last few paragraphs of the bank veto where he’s been very minutely looking at constitutional issues and splitting constitutional hairs, but then he looks out over the page in effect, and over the heads of Congress and says 'there are no necessary evils in government; its evils exist only in its abuses. And this act is an abuse and I won’t stand for it.' He’s clearly looking beyond his immediate audience in Congress and composing in effect the campaign document for the people at large to read and to understand. And presidents ever since, when they have been most effective, have tried not only to address the lawmakers right here in Washington, but also to go to the country. And that is something that Jackson really invented, I think, and all of his successors have tried to copy it. MR. WATTENBERG: Okay. Harry Watson, Bob Remini, thank you very much for joining us on Think Tank. And thank you. Please, remember to send us your email. We think it makes our program better. For Think Tank, I’m Ben Wattenberg. ANNOUNCER: We at Think Tank depend on your views to make our show better. Please send your questions and comments to New River Media, 4455 Connecticut Ave NW, Suite C-100, Washington, DC 20008 or email us at thinktank@pbs.org. To learn more about Think Tank, visit PBS online at pbs.org and please let us know where you watch Think Tank. Funding for Think Tank is provided by... (Pfizer) At Pfizer, we’re spending over five billion dollars looking for the cures of the future. We have 12,000 scientists and health experts who firmly believe the only thing incurable is our passion. Pfizer, life is our life’s work. Additional funding is provided by the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. 15 Back to top  Think Tank is made possible by generous support from the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Donner Canadian Foundation, the Dodge Jones Foundation, and Pfizer, Inc. ©Copyright Think Tank. All rights reserved. 
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