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I have a beautiful wife, an infant son & a schnauzer. viva la tex-mex. Words that describe or excite: Missional, Glocal, Lead, Innovate, Initiate, Create, Risk, Community

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Bush, Jacksonian Comparisons?

Here is a quote I found on Andrew Jackson, the 17th U.S. President, on Wikipedia.

Historian Robert Remini has summarized his standing:

Jackson was a much beloved and much hated figure during most of his adult life, and that reaction to him continues to the present day. During many reform periods in American history he has been seen as a hero, and Jacksonian democracy has been extolled as one of the most important advances in the development of popular government. But in the final decades of the twentieth century there has been a dramatic reversal of attitudes. Jacksonians have been tagged as "men on the make," out for their own economic and political advantage, beguiling the electorate with populist "claptrap." Jackson himself has been denounced as a fraud and opportunist who nearly wrecked the credit and currency facilities of this nation, a right-wing reactionary, a defender of slavery, and a vengeful murderer of Native Americans. While some or all of these negative opinions can be argued from a twentieth-century point of view, nevertheless Jackson remains one of the most important spokesmen for majoritarian rule in this country, a president who worried over the abuse of power by the central government and urged greater democracy through direct election for all government officers, and a president who brought into sharp focus the never-ending efforts of privileged elites who seek to use the government for their particular and selfish purposes and in the process endanger liberty and betray American democracy.
I was wondering if anyone else sees the similarities between the accusations listed in Remini's summary and current accusations used against George W.

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