American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham.
It is a pretty good book if you are into the whole research thing. A good book if you like history. A really good book if you like POTUS Andrew Jackson. Or, in my case, if you love anything that sheds light on our current political climate, this book rocks.
I love politics. They are like sports only with crazier athletes who take themselves way more seriously and not nearly as fun to watch. And the crazy we are seeing in 2011 is practically a repeat of Jackson’s day. Politics is a lot like soap operas, too, regurgitating the same plot lines.
They were fighting the debt (Jackson threw a party when the debt was paid off under his watch), they were fighting about states rights versus what is best for the union (it was just as snarky back then albeit more eloquent) and the political discourse was nasty. The debates they were having back then seem instructive today in light of the fact the Democrats and Republicans sole policy seem to be trashing the other side. And especially in light of the shooting of Gabby Giffords, which has everybody talking about political discourse in breathy tones. The one I like particularly came from Edward Livingston railing against the hazards of blind and unmoving partinsanship.
In Livingston’s words: “The spirit of which I speak creates imaginary and magnifies real causes of complaint; arrogates to itself every virtue--denies every merit to its opponents; secretly the worst designs… mounts the pulpit, and, in the name of God of mercy and peace, preaches discord and vengeance; invokes the worst scourges of Heaven, war, pestilence, and famine, as preferable alternatives to party defeat; blind, vindictive, cruel, remorseless, unprincipled, and at last frantic, it communicates its madness to friends as well as foes; respects nothing, fears nothing.”
He called this “excess of party rage” and I wish he were around now to talk sense into both sides. Of course, I’d love to have an Andrew Jackson on the ballot to vote for as well.
-- jengel


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