Trump Should Opt for Jefferson Over Jackson
Political change doesn’t require a crude persona or disregard for constitutional norms.
Like Mr. Trump, the roughhewn Jackson claimed his mandate from the frustrations of the “common people.” Mr. Trump once bragged that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without consequence. Jackson did shoot and kill someone in a duel. The voters didn’t care. But political change doesn’t require a crude persona or disregard for constitutional norms. The Jeffersonian Revolution of 1800 expanded democracy and reduced central-government overreach.
If they could speak to us, every president who served more than four years might warn about the second-term curse. While Mr. Trump may avoid it, his reputation will be more secure if he emulates Thomas Jefferson rather than Andrew Jackson.
Geoffrey Evans Moore
San Diego
Ms. Noonan refers to the “rabble mob,” people from all walks of life who showed up in Washington in 1829 when Jackson was sworn in as president. In his own observation that day, Sen. Daniel Webster said: “Persons have come from five hundred miles to see General Jackson and they really seem to think that the country has been rescued from some dreadful danger.”
That allusion to the threat of “some dreadful danger” isn’t dissimilar to Mr. Trump’s warnings that, “if we lose this election, we won’t have a country anymore.” It sounds to me as if there was a precursor to the MAGA movement nearly 200 years ago—along with the same skeptics who didn’t understand the message. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Barbara Fotine Atkins
North Las Vegas, Nev.
Alan Dershowitz makes several good points in his Feb. 13 letter “The Echoes of Jefferson in Trump’s Presidency,” but we shouldn’t overread the similarities. While Jefferson agreed to purchase the Louisiana Territory without prior congressional approval, he nevertheless adhered to the Constitution’s provision that the president “shall have Power . . . to make Treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur.”
Mr. Dershowitz also writes that he “railed against the judiciary for taking too much power.” It wasn’t so simple. Upon becoming president, Jefferson sought to remove many of the “midnight judges” that President John Adams had installed with the Judiciary Act of 1801. His attack, then, wasn’t so much on the judiciary as it was against his predecessor.
Finally, Mr. Dershowitz notes that Jefferson “imposed trade restrictions on foreign countries.” Jefferson ordered an embargo on trade with France and Britain because both nations were engaged in the Napoleonic Wars. Britain would impress American seamen into the Royal Navy to augment its ranks. Jefferson’s action was a way of preventing that practice and maintaining American neutrality, a precedent set by George Washington.
President Trump may do well to emulate Jefferson, but he’s not there yet.