A Generation Ago, They Called Dubya "Jacksonian"
The Washington Post, September 17, 2002 : When President Bush travels today to Andrew Jackson's hometown of Nashville, he may wish to stop by the Hermitage and lay a wreath at the grave of the Hero of New Orleans. More and more, Bush has been acting like the seventh president. Superficially, such a comparison is absurd. Jackson led a populist revolt against concentrated wealth in undoing the Bank of the United States; Bush is closely allied with corporate interests. I wouldn't say "absurd" so much as "obtuse". The writer, Dana Milbank, goes on, Jackson lost a disputed election in 1824 to the son of a former president; Bush, as son of a former president, won such a disputed election. Jackson was an uneducated war hero and father of the Democratic Party. Bush, of Andover, Yale, Harvard and the Texas National Guard, came to office in hopes of imitating McKinley, who defeated Jacksonian style populism in building the modern Republican Party a c...