Politics

American History Repeating Itself

If America is a country that feasts on politics, then political history, the history of great men and democratic movements, would have to factor in as a main course. The oft-overlooked John Adams has received much attention in the highly acclaimed HBO miniseries, but a quick peek at Amazon.com’s lists show that at least sixteen presidents are getting the biography treatment this year, including favorites like Zachary Taylor and James Polk, who has a 448 page barnburner released tomorrow and modestly titled Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America. William Henry Harrison was in office for thirty-one days, yet last year two books were released that focused exclusively on “Old Tippecanoe”. And you can learn almost anything about these men: Thomas Jefferson on Wine opens with “In his approach to wine, Jefferson seems remarkably modern in the breadth of his tastes. He liked the red and the white, the dry and the sweet.”

I recently read one political book I consider necessary for anyone who loves politics, history, and their great American theater. In 2005 Sean Wilentz, a Princeton scholar, contributing editor to The New Republic, and unabashed supporter of Hillary Clinton, released The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln. His book describes the precarious growth of democracy in our fledgling republic, but Wilentz proves to be comprehensive in his knowledge of United States history in his recently finished, much anticipated The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008.

At first glance, it amazes to think that someone can write at such great length, and with such great insight, about two vastly different historical periods. Yet early American politics and history are perhaps more closely linked to our political situation today than I first imagined. The years leading up to the election of 1800 found the Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans, the two original political parties, engaged in heated battle and a mutual loathing. Issues such as foreign policy and immigration control formed some of the most contentious issues, and first schisms, in American politics. I found Wilentz’s work valuable in destroying some of my political shibboleths, but was even more enwrapped in the parallels unearthed between the age of Reagan and our nascent republic. Here are a few:

The Clintons as a Political Force

Most people know the Adams’ as one of America’s early political bloodlines. Fewer, however, remember the Clintons and the political factions they created. Who knew there were Anti-Clintonians and a Clintonian People’s Party some two hundred years ago?

George Clinton was one of the incipient leaders of New York politics, serving as the state’s first governor, and as the longest to hold the title in United States history. He also served as Vice-President under Jefferson and unsuccessfully ran for President in 1808.

By that point his nephew, Dewitt Clinton, was gaining political power. DeWitt was the first Clinton to serve as a United States Senator representing New York and followed his uncle’s lead by becoming Governor. A polemical lightning rod, DeWitt Clinton was lauded by some as the visionary who opened up New York state’s commercial potential in overseeing the construction of the Erie Canal. Others despised him for his arrogance and patronage policies. The Bucktail movement, Martin Van Buren’s hugely popular political vehicle, was started expressly to rid politics of the pernicious effects of the Clintons. You didn’t like or dislike the Clintons, you loved or loathed them. As one of the first political dynasties, the Clinton’s generated both support and hatred at a level of passion that would be admired even by today’s partisan standards.

It should be noted that Bill Clinton, and thus Hillary, have no known relation to these earlier New York politicians. Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe III and his father was a traveling salesman.

There’s Nothing New about Sex Scandals

Alexander Hamilton is remembered perhaps first and foremost as a dueler, and many people might foggily associate him with banks every time they’re searching in their wallet for a ten spot. History bears out the truth that in the 1790s he reigned as the foremost manifestation of the Federalist mind and thus one of the most influential men in American politics.

Yet his vitriolic, dueling temper caused him to butt heads with many people, including Thomas Jefferson, who loathed him, John Adams, and, most famously Aaron Burr. Mr. Hamilton’s angers and passions also led to one of America’s first juicy, political sex scandals.

Wilentz provides a glossy opening salvo to Mr. Hamilton’s indescretion: “One summer day, Maria Reynolds, outwardly a respectable lady in much distress, introduced herself out of the blue to the Treasury secretary, told him her husband had abandoned her, and requested funds to enable her to stay with friends in New York. Much affected by the woman’s story, Hamilton, a married man, gave her some money – and then commenced an affair with her that continued for over a year.”

Maria Reynolds, however, was still married, and with her husband’s aid ensnared Hamilton in a blackmail scheme. Hamilton essentially paid for the privilege to have sex with another man’s wife, an act that the husband condoned. He then paid to have everything kept secret, too.

Eventually, of course, the news broke, and Hamilton was forced to make a public confession. He took an admirable stance in giving the affair full disclosure, including publishing several of the letters between himself and Mrs. Reynolds. While Hamilton did not fully disappear from public life, his star was falling: after the affair became public, he was forced to resign from his post as Secretary of Treasury and his chances and aspirations at higher offices and statesmanship were effectively ruined.

Yet the person you feel for most in such affairs? The attractive, pious, wealthy wife, described by Hamilton as the “best of wives and best of women”, a tireless social worker who stood by her man during and after the affair broke, bore Hamilton eight children and co-founded New York’s first private orphanage. Every time you see her face it’s another reminder of her husband’s flaws and indiscretion.

War Fever Used as a Means of Political Expediency

Presidents gain in popularity when a country feels threatened. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the history books, though George W. need look no further than his father’s 80% approval ratings during the Persian Gulf war to learn this one. Yet the parallels between the late 1790s and our recent past are startling, and worth noting.

John Adams goes down in history as our first faux-heroic commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Wilentz: “The diminutive, anxious Adams suddenly became, for the only time in his life, the focus of popular enthusiasm as the heroic American commander-in-chief . . . Adams took to delivering militant speeches, and appeared in public in military regalia, a sword strapped to his side.”

The image of a pudgy little lawyer from Boston bedecked in full military regalia is worthy of a chuckle, but there is often something sinister manifested in such patriotism. At the heart of the issue were differing thoughts in foreign policy between the Federalists, who favored and emulated the British, and the Republicans, who tended to favor the French and their new republican government. In the mid 1790s, America was negotiating with France and the French offered bribes to the indignant, anglophile American ambassadors. This action was a stroke of luck for the Federalists, and the so-called XYZ Affair led to the sound of drums being struck, the site of flags being unfurled, and an entire country emboldened in a patriotic outburst of support for the Federalist government.

The Federalists, in their last great push of power, worked hard to take advantage of their newfound support. They passed various immigration restrictions aimed at culling the tides of foreigners entering the country. These “alien acts” gave various newfound powers to the executive, including allowing him to deport any alien that he deemed a threat to the nation’s security. It’s worth mentioning that new immigrants tended to favor the Republican, Jeffersonian interests in their political views, not the Federalist elite.

Moreover, the Federalists saw their chance to build a strong national army, something that Alexander Hamilton was panting to accomplish. With the anti-French military fever at its height, Congress approved the first direct federal tax on dwellings, land, and slaves, raising a provisional army to pay for preparation towards a possible war with France.

Yet the most suppressing act by the federal government was implementing the Sedition Act, in which anyone who criticized the Federalist regime could be fined and imprisoned. It appeared as though the Federalists had over-reached their power when they began throwing various members of their Republican opposition in jail. One of the more humorous stories that Wilentz tells is of a New Jersey drunkard who was sent to federal prison for “having told a tavern-keeper that he would not care if President Adams were to get shot ‘thro’ his arse’”. A fun anecdote, but one that underscores the reality of how dangerous such a law was for the average American citizen.

The Sedition Act and its restrictions of freedom were scary and wildly unpopular outside of Federalist New England, but the Adamses, Hamilton, and friends had attempted to reach even farther: a Federalist Senator from Pennsylvania proposed a bill that would replace the Electoral College’s election of the President with a thirteen person committee composed of the Federalist Chief Justice and six members from each house of Congress. At that point, both houses were unsurprisingly dominated by Federalists. All of these actions were eventually seen as the power-grasp that they were and thus aided in the demise of the Federalist Party and the ascension of the Jeffersonian Democrats.

And so - a political party takes advantage of wartime and its patriotic fervor to gain power, push individual party agendas, and greatly enhance the power of the executive branch? Maybe George Bush should have paid a bit more attention in his Yale history classes.

The Myth of Unbiased News Sources

Every card carrying liberal in the country will stand on their soapbox and tell you that Fox News is not an objective news source. And what’s more, they’ll probably be damned upset about it. On the other side there has been much talk about the pro-Obama press corps, noticeably lampooned on Saturday Night Live. All such talk hearkens back to a time when the press was objective, when news sources were not tainted by bias and swelled with non-partisan information that keep the American citizen informed of his political happenings.

Except, as far as I can tell, outside of a Rockwell painting this age never existed. The last decade of the Eighteenth century fostered various newspapers and pamphleteers, springing up and fomenting partisan behavior throughout the country. A clear example of this is to be seen in Philip Freneau and his National Gazette.

Freneau’s newspaper was set up by the nascent Jeffersonian Republican movement expressly to counter the Federalist’s quasi-administration newspaper, the Gazette of the United States, a newspaper that according to Jefferson dealt in “doctrines of monarchy, aristocracy, and the exclusion of the influence of the people.” I’ve heard epithets thrown at Fox News, or, say, Frank Rich for their partisan viewpoints, but rarely anything so high-pitched as Jefferson’s condemnation.

The Republican’s solution? They gave Freneau a lowly clerkship in the State Department, with the goal of his moving to Philadelphia and leading an all-out attack on Alexander Hamilton. He took the editorial post of the newly created newspaper of the Republican opposition, a paper that was nothing if not a building block towards establishing Republican support around the country. And, as Wilentz remarks, the paper was “an anti-administration ‘whig-vehicle of intelligence’ with a democratic edge . . . a vehicle that traveled from the top down, closely watched by men who thought of themselves as the country’s natural leaders.”

Other notable members of the Republican press went on to hold office, even while maintaining their editorial control of their newspapers. Can you imagine the reaction if it came out that Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton had hand picked each editorship of the New York Times? Or if Martin Baron spent his time not editing the Boston Globe moonlighting as Mayor of Boston?

Conclusion
The election of 1800 saw a sea change in American politics, with Thomas Jefferson winning the presidency over John Adams, an election that he lost four years earlier. The Federalists were a bellicose nation divided and the Jeffersonian Republicans took advantage, mobilizing their forces in the press, uniting the rural and city democrats, and proving to be excellent and political organizers, and, in many ways, compromisers. Jefferson and his fellow Virginians controlled the White House for twenty-five years, yet an even more telling sign of their influence was that when John Quincy Adams, son of the last Federalist chief, became the sixth President to take office he was sworn in as a member of the Republican party.

Yet few battles end in definitive victory, and much of our government today trends back to the thoughts and implementations of Alexander Hamilton (think big national bank, government controls over business, military industrial complex, et cetera). All history clearly builds upon itself, but it’s important to draw the correlation that all governments and political bodies do the same. As much as Eliot Spitzer and George W. have repeated the ugliness of the past, all political figures are not doomed to be villains, just as we hold men like Adams, Hamilton, and Jefferson with reverence despite history.

© 2008 Obsolete Vernacular.