Why Donald Trump is not Andrew Jackson (and Why That Matters for American Constitutional Democracy)

Eric Lomazoff

In mid-February 2017, the Associated Press published a piece by Jonathan Lemire that ran in numerous online outlets: “Trump election has parallels to Andrew Jackson’s presidency.” Lemire suggested that Trump, like Jackson, was an “unvarnished celebrity outsider” who prevailed in an “ugly, highly personal presidential election” over a “member of the Washington establishment looking to extend a political dynasty in the White House” by pledging “to represent the forgotten laborer.” To burnish the case for his exercise, Lemire added that Steve Bannon—Trump’s then—chief strategist has “pushed the comparison,” and the president “has hung a portrait of Jackson in the Oval Office.”

None of these similarities between Trump and Jackson strike me as matters of obvious consequence for thinking about the short or long-term health of American constitutional democracy. “Outsiders” such as Ulysses Grant and Dwight Eisenhower have been elected to the presidency and completed their terms without incident. Incumbents such as Thomas Jefferson and Rutherford B. Hayes successfully governed following “highly personal” contests. Grover Cleveland defeated the grandson of a former president (who was occupying the Oval Office himself at the time), but that does not appear to have inhibited his ability to lead the executive branch responsibly. Finally, Ronald Reagan demonstrated that successful appeals to working-class voters are not always followed by severe constitutional stress.