Almost all commentators do not understand what the re-elected President of the United States, Donald Trump, is doing, because they wrongly interpret his actions through the prism of Republican or woke ideologies. However, Trump, who has successively frequented the Democratic Party, the Tea Party, and today the Republican Party, claims to be a follower of a fourth ideology: Jacksonianism. During his first term, he decorated the Oval Office with a portrait of his predecessor Andrew Jackson.

But what is Jacksonism?

Andrew Jackson's Precedent

Andrew Jackson, whose family had almost all died in the wars against the English, was a lawyer. In this capacity, he wrote the Tennessee Constitution (1796). It was considered to give too much power to the Legislature and not enough to the Executive (the governor), and it did not establish a Supreme Court. However, it was hailed as "the least imperfect and most republican of constitutions" by the President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson.

Section 1 of Article III gives the right to vote to all free men (white and black), 21 years of age or older, who own freehold property or have resided in the county for six months. There is also a provision giving men serving in the militia the right to elect their officers. The Bill of Rights contained in it states that agnostics and atheists have the same rights as believers. These last three provisions were particularly offensive to the Puritans of the East Coast.

During the war between France and Great Britain in 1812, Paris and London imposed a naval blockade. It was to force the Russian Empire to respect it that Napoleon attacked Russia, and because Her Majesty's Prime Minister confiscated 900 American ships that were attempting to trade with France, Washington once again went to war against its former colonizer.

During this "second war of independence", Andrew Jackson, who had become a general, distinguished himself as much by his military as by his diplomatic skills. He managed to maneuver the Creek Indians, especially the Cherokees. This war was useless because it ended with a treaty that established a return to pre-war conditions, but General Jackson won the first military victory in the history of the United States.

Andrew Jackson later retired to Florida, where he was elected governor. He had two British spies executed, although this was not explicitly within his power, which his opponents called an assassination. He ran for president of the United States in 1824 and won a majority of the popular vote and a majority of electors (designated by the governors), but, following a sleight of hand (a post-election agreement by the two other candidates), he was not considered elected. The electoral college (i.e. the representatives of the governors) nominated John Quincy Adams (as in 2020, it nominated Joe Biden against Donald Trump). Furious, he created the current Democratic Party to rally his supporters. The reality of the election stolen by the corrupt political class served as an electoral theme for Andrew Jackson (as for Donald Trump).

He was elected by a landslide in 1828, when many states had adopted the consultative vote to tell their governors which electors they should choose.

Reminder: the United States Constitution does not indicate that the president must be elected by universal suffrage, direct or indirect, but by the representatives of the governors. In the words of the "founding fathers", it was not at all a question of establishing a democracy.

He was therefore the first president elected, not by, but with the support of universal suffrage. In his inaugural address, he pledged to push the Indians back to the West. His popular base came to cheer him at the White House, but his supporters were so numerous that they devastated it and forced him to flee through a window.

Jackson had married young Rachel, who believed she was divorced, but in reality the act had not been registered. His opponents made a scandal of it, accusing him of living with a married woman. In fact, Rachel died before his second term. He therefore entrusted the role of "first lady" to his niece Emily who married her cousin, Andrew Jackson Donelson, who was his private secretary.

When forming his administration, Andrew Jackson dismissed corrupt officials. When he failed to replace them, he eventually appointed his close friends and relatives. Jackson appointed one of his friends, John Eaton, as Secretary of War. For convenience, he was staying at the White House when the president was away. The anti-Jacksonists then spread rumors of the scandalous life of the Eatons.

These sex scandals, all invented by his puritan opponents, caused Jackson to separate from his vice president, who thought like the East Coast elite.

In 1830, Andrew Jackson passed the Indian Removal Act. It was a plan to divide up the territory of North America by placing the Indians west of the Mississippi. 70 treaties were signed for $68 million in compensation. Jackson then opposed the legendary David Crockett (representing Tennessee). About fifty tribes were displaced, including the Cherokees, who also signed a peace treaty. The tribe appealed twice to the Supreme Court to clarify its meaning. The exodus of the Cherokees (the "Valley of Tears" episode) was particularly harsh, with a quarter of them dying during the displacement. However, this genocide did not take place under Jackson, but under the presidency of his successor. Today, the Cherokees, who, unlike other Indians, did not question these treaties, are the only tribe that is prosperous.

Andrew Jackson, like George Washington and many others, was a slave owner. Two centuries later, the woke movement presents him as a slave owner and a massacrer of Indians, an adversary of minorities. In reality, he had adopted as a son an Indian baby, orphaned by war, whom he named Lyncoya. He was therefore accused, by his contemporaries, of corrupting civilization by introducing an Indian to the governorship of Florida, then to the White House.

He endorsed the "Monroe Doctrine" which at the time meant that European powers would refrain from colonizing the Americas while the United States would refrain from intervening in Europe. This principle was only twisted half a century later to allow the United States to colonize Latin America without European rivalry.

In 1832, he vetoed a bill extending a private/public Central Bank of the United States (originally created by Alexander Hamilton). Similarly, in 1836, he vetoed the creation of the Federal Reserve (today's Fed). In the meantime, he made sure to pay off all of the country's public debt. This is the one and only time in its history that the United States was not in debt (the public debt is today $34.5 trillion, or 122.3% of GDP).
Andrew Jackson, who in the popular imagination symbolizes resistance to the power of financiers, appears on the $20 bill. The Democrats wanted to remove his image and replace it with that of a black woman symbolizing the dignity of minorities.

His opposition to the central bank crystallized the conflict between the elites and the farmers. He believed that this bank had monopolistic powers and played a role in political life, implying that it corrupted parliamentarians so that they would vote against the interests of the people. Andrew Jackson managed to broaden the electoral base in many states so that by the end of his terms, seven times more citizens could participate in the electoral consultations. His re-election, in 1833, was triumphant: 55% of the popular vote against 37% and 219 electors against 49 for his rival (Reminder: in the United States the president is not chosen by electors. The popular vote indicates to the governors the color of the electors that he asks him to choose. It is only these electors who designate the president). His opponents accused him of populism.

Then came the dispute over customs duties, which would turn into a civil war 25 years later (which, contrary to official history, has nothing to do with the abolition of slavery that both sides practiced). South Carolina decided not to apply federal customs tariffs (sectionalism). Andrew Jackson, presenting the danger of a civil war, condemned these actions as well as the idea of ​​secession. He threatened to kill those who took this path. The president managed to restore calm and preserve the unity of the nation by successfully proposing a middle position between that of the southerners (free trade) and that of the northerners (protectionists).
Andrew Jackson always defended the central power against the governors, not out of centralizing principle, but out of distrust of local elites. He tried to prevent civil war by appealing to the people. In his view, the interests of peasants and early workers were in agreement, while those of the big landowners and captains of industry were in conflict. In this conflict, the central bank played the main role by speculating internationally and making the United States economy dependent on fluctuations in foreign markets. It was therefore he who concluded tariff agreements with the United Kingdom, Russia and the Ottoman Empire. He designed a vast network of means of communication across Latin America to export American products to the Far East. He negotiated indemnities with the European powers for the Napoleonic Wars. He was intractable with the King of the French, Louis-Philippe. He failed, however, to buy Texas from Mexico, probably because he surrounded himself with bad diplomats. Although the expression is later, Andrew Jackson began to think of the "manifest destiny of the United States" ("To extend ourselves over the whole continent which Providence has allotted us for the free development of our millions of inhabitants who multiply every year"). However, it was only after him that this concept justified the extension of "the perfect form of government" throughout the world.

Jackson's Puritan opponents portrayed him as an atheist fighting against the churches, as a manipulator of the populace against the educated elites.

Jackson and Trump

General Jackson's example became a doctrine under the impetus of the President's private secretary, Andrew Jackson Donelson. It was organized around two strong ideas:

- From a tactical point of view: to shift the conflicts opposing the federated states to the federal power towards the division opposing the people to the puritan elites of the East Coast.

- From a strategic point of view: to substitute trade for war.

Tactical

For example, during his first term, President Trump pushed the Supreme Court to refer abortion to each state. As a result, his woke opponents, including Kamala Harris, wrongly accused him of banning abortion when it is legal in 38 states.

Andrew Jackson tried to reform the electoral system to give all males the right to vote, regardless of their skin color. He only managed to impose universal suffrage for the election of senators. Donald Trump intends to extend universal suffrage to the election of the president by eliminating the electoral college designated by the governors.

Let us remember that the Constitution was designed by large landowners who wanted to found a monarchy without nobility and especially not a democracy. In their minds, and in the text they wrote, there was to be no universal suffrage.

Contrary to what we think, the debate on the 2020 election refers first to the ambiguity of the text of this constitution and not to the counting of the votes cast. The massive re-election of Donald Trump has proven that the reality of the popular vote has nothing to do with the impressions of the ruling class.

Trump, like Jackson, has consistently relied on the popular vote. Both have designed "populist" election campaigns — that is, in their case, responding to people's expectations rather than endorsing the solutions they imagine.

Trump has relied on Steve Bannon's Cambridge analytica techniques: scanning social media to analyze what people think, then targeting particular profiles with messages designed for them. By contrast, his opponents have relied on Cass Sunstein's behavioral and cognitive techniques.

A quick note on crowd reactions. Andrew Jackson's supporters who came to cheer him devastated the White House, not because they wanted to destroy it, but because there were too many of them. Similarly, Donald Trump's supporters damaged the Congress buildings, not because they wanted to destroy them, but because there were too many of them. There was never an attempted coup as their opponents claim, but rather poor crowd management by the police as Joshua Philipp has shown (The Real Story of January 6).

Strategy

Andrew Jackson sought to end the Indian Wars by compensating and deporting the tribes, with mixed success. There is concern that Donald Trump will approach the Israeli-Palestinian issue in the same way by compensating the Palestinians and forcibly displacing them to the Sinai. However, this would be to equate the "manifest destiny of the United States" with the expansionism of the "religious Zionists." This risk exists, but for the moment, there is no evidence that this will be the case.

Andrew Jackson expanded US trade around the world, negotiating bilateral (not multilateral) deals.

Donald Trump, a businessman, has withdrawn from multilateral trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). While his predecessors were about setting standards with their economic partners and then imposing them on China, Trump has no use for international standards as long as the US can penetrate markets.
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