1824 and 2016

Citizens are so preoccupied with the spec­tacle of the current election cycle that they forget a precedent exists for their current times; those who wonder what Clinton and Trump presidencies would be like need look no further than John Quincy Adams and “Old Hickory” himself, Andrew Jackson. It’s 1824, and the United States is gearing up to choose the next president. After eight years of the first president, four of the second, and three con­secutive two-termers, the country is aching for someone fresh. In that desire, they find the aforementioned Jackson, a populist who menac­es Washington’s Old Guard. His main opponent is none other than the consummate representa­tive of that Old Guard – Adams. To make things even more bizarre, this election cycle sees a sig­nificant rise in voter turnout. Sound familiar?

Multiple pundits have called the 2016 election cycle unprecedented, mostly because of all its implications, foremost of which are change ver­sus the status quo and populism versus cen­trism. The shockwaves that Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders sent throughout the initial stag­es of the election gave new meaning to the politically scientific terms “party realignment” and “party dealignment.” After decades of divi­sion down party lines, the citizens of the United States had finally begun ignoring their differenc­es in favor of their commonalities: hatred for the “ruling class,” the “Washington power brokers,” the Establishment.

The Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, who has been prominent on the Washington scene for more than twenty years, thus finds a formidable candidate in an individual at whom most scoffed a year ago. Like the representatives of today, pol­iticians of the 1820s jeered at the candidacy of Andrew Jackson, a “Washington outsider,” with his claim to fame being his unnecessary victory against the British after the War of 1812 had al­ready ended. However, what they did not factor in was that this victory, among other achievements during Jackson’s time in the military, made him very popular among working-class voters. Just like his 200-year-old counterpart, Trump appeals to that very same demographic, adding credence to the claim of similarity.

Moreover, like 1824, 2016 comes at the tail end of a cycle that started with trendset­ters Ronald Reagan and George Washington, Northern “one-percenters” who were born into politics, George H. W. Bush and John Adams, Southerners and consummate politicians, Bill Clinton and Thomas Jefferson, warhawks and controversial presidents George W. Bush and James Madison, and moderately popular leaders Barack Obama and James Monroe. Unnervingly, the pattern of terms is also the same. The first men served two terms, the second set one each, and the last three two each. In both form and content, the parallels between the periods of 1788 to 1824 and 1980 to 2016 are striking.

If these coincidences keep popping up, the nation could see no candidate win a majority of the elec­toral vote, as happened in 1824, when Andrew Jackson secured not a majority, but the most pop­ular and Electoral votes. That election saw the contest thrown to the House of Representatives, where “shady backroom deals”—essentially po­litical bargains —were made between Speaker of the House Henry Clay, and John Quincy Adams, the electoral runner-up. Adams won that elec­tion, and though his presidency included the im­plementation of “internal improvements,” un­fortunately for him, 1828 was not a forgiving election cycle. His opponent of four years prior, Jackson, again trounced him in the popular and electoral votes. No House vote could save Adams this time, and as a result, eight years of Andrew Jackson followed.

This history of the antebellum era casts light on what the Clinton and Trump presidencies might be. The administration of John Quincy Adams saw the work of a technical, hands-on-man attempting to better transportation and communication across the fledgling na­tion. The leadership of Andrew Jackson, like that of his predecessor, saw the strengthening of federal power as a result of his enforcement of the “Tariff of Abominations” in 1830 against the nullification of the federal legislation by South Carolina. More ominously, he also flout­ed an order issued by the Supreme Court not to remove Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw Native Americans from the southeastern United States, leading to the deaths of thousands of Native Americans— an impeachable offense.

Through these connections, Clinton, compar­atively speaking, is this election’s Adams, and Trump, with his vitriol and lack of political experi­ence, its Jackson. Trump, again like Jackson, has questions of legitimacy surrounding his mar­riage, his own problems stemming from multi­ple unions. Clinton, again like Adams, is related to a president in the aforementioned cycle. She wants to stay the general course, like Adams did, while Trump has something completely differ­ent in mind, á la Jackson. Perhaps Clinton will be President until 2021, and then Trump will take the helm for the rest of the 2020s. Regardless, saying that this election is unprecedented is simply incorrect. Americans have a road map for this cycle, and they would be wise to use it.