Full Metal Jackson

BRIAN: We’re back with BackStory. I’m Brian Balogh.

PETER: I am Peter Onuff.

ED: And I’m Ed Ayers. In the wake of President Obama’s recent executive order on immigration, and the firestorm of criticism that has followed, we’re talking today about fears of executive overreach. A few years ago a couple of political scientists named Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule coined the term tyrannophobia to refer to these fears. And we’re devoting today’s show to that phobia’s history in America.

BRIAN: I want to take a moment and dig into our theme, tyrannophobia. To be honest, I don’t really get it. I mean, we have Washington who is remembered for retiring peacefully. He’s followed by this fat guy who has monarchical trappings, but nobody’s going to take John Adams all that seriously. And then Jefferson greets people, not with his scepter, but in his slippers. And we have the world’s first political scientist in James Madison. Who’s going to fear that guy?

[LAUGHTER]

PETER: Nice.

BRIAN: Monroe, I don’t even remember what Monroe did. These don’t strike me.

PETER: He had a doctrine.

BRIAN: These don’t–

[LAUGHING]

Exactly. This don’t strike me as the kind of executives who would strike fear into the hearts of Americans. So I have a simple question, Peter and Ed, and that is, why does this fear of executive overreach continue? I mean, what kept it alive?

PETER: Yeah, well, that founding that you’re talking about and those weak constitutional presidents who observed rule of law, are our founders, we revere them. Well, they look different from the contemporaneous perspective. There’s a lot of anxiety. The foundation of this new regime is actually built on quicksand. Ben Franklin says at the end of the Constitutional Convention to the republic, if you can keep it. It’s an experiment. And what is the default? What happens when a Republican government falls? We have the emergence of a strong man.

And I think that fear does not dissipate. In fact, the more the Republican constitutional form of government seems to provide an alternative, the greater the mounting anxiety that one day a military chieftain will come along, and that day is not too far in the future, Ed.

ED: And in the meantime, you know what’s happening during all those benign American leaders, Brian? One word for you. Napoleon.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

The Western world is focused on the emergence of this non-king emperor whose power’s built on military power. Well, as it turns out, you may recall there is a War of 1812, sometime around 1812.

[LAUGHTER]

PETER: We did a show on that.

ED: And what happens is that out of that, by accident, an America Napoleon seems to rise. Andrew Jackson conquering both the English, the king and his men, and the American Indians. The two big threats to the new American nation.

BRIAN: So why were people more scared of him than Washington? Washington was a military hero. What were they scared of, Ed?

ED: That he was so popular with other people. So he’s a man of the west. We think of Tennessee as being the south, but it’s the west. He’s a man of the frontier. He’s unlettered. He’s dueled, He is big. He’s a horseman. And he refuses to pay attention to niceties like treaties and letters from the President of the United States. And the people of the west say, finally, somebody who is one of us. He’s not overly refined. He’s not another Adams. He’s not somebody with a wig. He’s somebody out there with big boots and a horse and a dueling pistol.

PETER: And, Ed, don’t voters in this period, and particularly Democrats with a careful D, that is the followers of Jackson, see themselves like soldiers following the chief?

ED: Yes, and this army of voters elects him in 1828, so he becomes President of the United states. Then what is a guy who’s risen mainly because of his military prowess and reputation going to do now that he has the reins?

BRIAN: But Ed, my history textbooks tell me then he was a Democrat, that he was all against centralized power.

[GROAN]

How could people be afraid of the very guy who wanted to decentralize power in America?

ED: Ooh, what a sophisticated question.

BRIAN: I read a lot of textbooks.

PETER: Yeah, but hold it.

[LAUGHTER]

I think the answer there is that Jackson represents the opposition of the people to the entrenched interests, or what they would call in the day, the aristocrats, the John Quincy Adams of the world, who use constitutional government rule of law to thwart the will of the people. I think you’ve got to see this idea of centralized power and democratic power as being one in the same.

ED: And joined with those ruffians on the border are the ruffians inside the city.

PETER: Yes, exactly.

ED: So the Jacksonian coalition is also forged by unions and working men and artisans against the elites who are their own bosses.

BRIAN: And that’s the Democratic Party you just described. Is that right, Ed?

ED: That’s the new Democratic Party that emerges around Andrew Jackson in the 1820s.

BRIAN: As I recall, there was another party.

PETER: Yeah, the Whigs.

ED: And we need to remember, the Whigs take their name from the English party that is an opposition to the King. So if people wonder why we have the Whigs was an H, just because they’re very much looking backward to the English tradition of this fear against the king that Peter introduced at the beginning of this conversation. But this is where the creation of America’s two-party system comes from. It really crystallizes in support of and in opposition to Jackson.

BRIAN: So what’s the record? He’s president for eight years. They called him King Andrew. Is that correct? I don’t see Jackson taking over the country with the military.

ED: Oh man, you’re not paying attention.

PETER: Well, you’re just not a Whig. That’s your problem.

[LAUGHTER]

ED: Yeah, that’s right. So let’s try to present it objectively. What does he do? His major policy goal is to dismantle the Bank of the United States, which is the very embodiment of this coordinated, controlled economy that Peter is talking about.

BRIAN: He’s decentralizing power.

ED: Exactly.

BRIAN: This is local control, man.

ED: Exactly. He’s putting the economy in the hands of a bunch of wildcat banks as they are called. What else does he do? He tells the Supreme Court, if they want to try to stop the removal of American Indians he says, great, let them enforce it.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

BRIAN: I could see how that’s problematic.

ED: And then when South Carolina threatens to nullify a national tariff, he says, no, you will not, and if you do, I have the power of the military to put this down. So in every way, whether you see it as progressive or not, what he’s doing is consolidating power and the threat of power in his hands.

BRIAN: So I want to return to our original question. I mean, I hear what you’re saying. You’re saying that Jackson really made these latent fears of tyrants, he made them real. I get it. Are you saying that if that particular man hadn’t come out of Tennessee and won that big battle in New Orleans and had the kind of popular– are you saying that tyrannophobia would’ve simply died away slowly?

PETER: No, I think those fears are endemic. They’re out there. And what happens– I think the paradox, Ed, looking forward– is that when the people triumphant, at least symbolically with Jackson’s election, and you keep those people mobilized in the Democracy, capital D, that is the Democratic Party– they’re going to use their electoral power to make sure that the Whigs, the bad guys, the tops, the aristocrats, don’t get back into power. So in a way there’s a party conflict sublimation of this great war–

[LAUGHING]

Between the people and the what later are called the interests. And so the whole point of politics is just to get elected. There seems to be more and more a cynicism about the political process under the second party system, Whigs and Democrats, and that the increasing demoralization leads to a stability in this two party conflict that leads to stasis.

ED: It’s a very benign sort of outcome of this fundamental tension, Brian.

PETER: Until it isn’t.

[LAUGHING]

ED: Yeah, and when does it break? It breaks after you have such a weak president, James Buchanan, that people feel like we’re out of control here. The north creates Abraham Lincoln as a sort of benign Andrew Jackson, somebody who’s going to stand up and say forthrightly what he believes in. And when he does, the south freaks out because now we have another strong executive, and you may recall that the upper south actually secedes when that new President Abraham Lincoln calls for troops to put down the rebels in the deep south.

PETER: The commander-in-chief threatening to use the Army.

ED: They said, we better get out of here before our worst dreams come to pass.

BRIAN: They know a tyrant when they see one.

ED: Exactly.

[MUSIC PLAYING]