Presidential Biographies III
Jackson, Van Buren, Tyler
My new post for Wednesdays, fulfilling a long-standing promise to
and hopefully extending some horizons here and there. Many of these biographies I haven’t read for several years, so these posts will be sign-posts or lamp-posts more than… err… the sort of posts you drive into the ground when you want them to stay there for ever.
A serious hat-tip to My Journey Through the Best Presidential Biographies.
American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, Jon Meacham
Jackson was a great disruptor with a somewhat cloudy reputation whose supporters saw him as something akin to a national liberator. The first six presidents, Five Founders and an heir, were followed by a rambunctious warrior whom I really want to describe as a rootin’-tootin’ son of a gun. Meacham paints Jackson in all his fiery colours, which makes Old Hickory highly impressive if not always necessarily likeable. An essential biography of a most unusual and unexpected president.
Martin Van Buren and the American Political System, Donald Cole
It’s books like this that really depress, in every sense, one’s interest in American democracy. Cole describes Van Buren as ‘pragmatic,’ ‘flexible’ and ‘a great political manager’ and I read ‘unprincipled,’ ‘conniving’ and ‘corrupt.’ There are so many minor players that it resembles a Russian novel and democracy is just the shuffling of cards within state politics. And it’s dull. If this is the best biography of Van Buren, I have no intention of reading another until or unless required to do so.
[Have not yet read a biography of William Henry Harrison, Ninth President. There aren’t many].
John Tyler: The Accidental President, Edward Crapol
I admire Crapol’s admission that he’s trying to raise our estimation of Tyler from ‘appalling’ to ‘awful.’ After I read his book, my estimation was so bad that I re-wrote one of my lyrics, the character referring to a potential other half:
“He likes Lincoln, he likes Tyler / So I’m thinkin’ – who was Tyler?”
Became “he likes Lincoln, he likes Taylor.”
Nice try Mr Crapol, but no. ‘His Accidency’ was a shabby and unfortunate figure whose main achievement was to confirm that the Vice-President would automatically succeed on the death of a sitting president.