So, one of my long-term projects is to read one biography of each of the presidents, from Washington to LBJ, in order. I'm cutting it off at LBJ because that's civil rights, the Great Society, Vietnam, and because anyone after that is too recent, and any biography is going to be too slanted, because the biographer will likely remember the person, or maybe even actually know them.
I've gotten through Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Quincy Adams, and it has been very interesting so far. My personal evaluation of each after reading their biography is:
Washington: unchanged, but much more refined appreciation
Adams: up
Jefferson: down
Madison: pre-1790, up; post-1790, down
Monroe: up
Quincy Adams: up
I try to read 1 biography per quarter, but sometimes I fall behind. I also get sidetracked; for instance, after Madison I read David McCullough's 1776. If there is any piece of history you're interested in reading about, and David McCullough wrote a book about it, you should read his book. It's better than any other one on the same topic, I promise.
Sometimes I think about the trillion dollars we've thrown at Iraq and imagine all the things we could have done with that money instead:
1) universal healthcare
2) reducing class sizes to 10 for every class in America
3) funding research to create a doughnut that has the same nutritional impact as a multivitamin, yet tastes just like a Dunkin Donut
4) funding research to that would establish the ability of any person to regrow and transplant any part of their body (I need a new right knee, right ankle, right shoulder, left big toe, and 2 new thumbs)
5) gene therapy to restore hair loss (bite me.)
6) setting up a machine that could keep David McCullough's brain alive and functioning indefinitely, so that he could write a biography of each US president, and a book about each major event in world history.
I also got sidetracked because JOC made me read a biography of Ben Franklin, which I did enjoy, but which was motivated by his favoring Franklin over John Adams, and my pointing out that he's on crack for taking that position. After reading it, though, I realized that it was pointless to move on to Andrew Jackson until I read a biography of the other titan of the revolutionary period: Alexander Hamilton.
Prior to reading this biography, all I really knew about Hamilton was that he was shot and killed in a duel by Aaron Burr. I didn't realize he epitomizes the American dream in that he arrived in this country a penniless orphaned teenager but studied hard and eventually became Washington's most important aide during the Revolution, and then during Washington's presidency he more or less singlehandedly created America's financial system, while also helping to establish some of the principles of Constitutional law (implied powers, etc.) that we have built modern American society upon.
But all that isn't really what I think is most interesting. What I think is most interesting is a running theme throughout all 8 biographies I've read so far, which is, the extent to which partisan politics then resembles partisan politics today. If you're like me, you have a tendency to deplore modern politics, wondering why we don't have giants like Washington, et al., to lead us. But in fact, politics then was just as spirited, personal, and frequently bitter as it is today.
The two-party system basically was created out of the extremely bitter political infighting between Washington's Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, and his Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson. Washington was really the first, and only, "uniter, not divider" that we've ever had. Hamilton's group became known as the Federalists, who are the ancestors of the Democratic party, and Jefferson's group became known as the Republicans (who eventually became Whigs, and then became Republicans again in 1854). By and large, Federalists came from the north, and were businesspeople, city dwellers, and abolitionists. By and large, Republicans came from the south, were farmers, and functionally supported slavery. (I say functionally because Jefferson, for example, privately lamented slavery but continued to own scores of slaves while also supporting the right of the South to continue to have slavery).
It is fascinating to see the roots of the modern parties in these 200 year old struggles. Here is a little quote from "Alexander Hamilton", by Ron Chernow:
"It is tempting but misleading to think of the Federalists as the patrician party and the Republicans as representing the commoners. 'The controversy which embroiled the two champions was not basically concerned with the haves and the have-nots,' James T. Flexner wrote of the clash between Hamilton and Jefferson. 'It was between rival economic systems, each of which aimed at generating its own men of property.' In fact, the Federalist ranks had plenty of self-made lawyers like Hamilton, while the Republicans were led by two men of immense inherited wealth: Jefferson and Madison. Moreover, the political culture of the slaveholding south was marked by much more troubling disparities of wealth and status than was that of the north, and the vast majority of abolitionist politicians came from the so-called aristocrats of the Federalist party."
The parallels here, while not perfect, are nevertheless striking. The modern Democratic party continues to draw its support from the north, and from urban areas generally, while the modern Republican party continues to draw its support from the south and from rural areas generally. And how often do you hear Republican commentators refer to Democrats as "elitist", when
1) From a policy perspective, Democratic politics tends to be more geared toward fighting inequity than does Republican politics, and
2) Tons of Republicans are "elitist", as they use the word. Think both Bushes, who come from an old monied family and went to fancy Ivy-league schools (not that attending a fancy Ivy-league school is inherently bad :-)
I guess the big similarity to me is the success Republicans had then in portraying themselves as protecting the interests of the common man, while some elitist other party tried to screw them, when all the while they were in fact protecting the interests of a narrow slice of the population- a slice of the population that already had tremendous wealth and power. And the battles fought between the parties then were titanic, bitter, fundamentally ideological, and had ramifications for generations.
Just like today.
No comments:
Post a Comment