Party Animal

I used to think that Martin van Buren's lasting contribution to American life was the phrase "OK," having been taught in grade school that it came from one of his nicknames: "Old Kinderhook."

Well, that and this:



Van Buren's a punchline, an answer to a trivia question; he's shorthand for "obscure president." And yet, if what I'm reading is right, Martin van Buren has more of a lasting effect on American politics than anyone between Jefferson and Lincoln. Van Buren, you see, invents the political party.

The Little Magician (along with "The Red Fox"; let's put it out there: van Buren has the best nicknames of any president) is one of the main developers of the Democratic Party in New York. Why New York? Because New York's the first state to extend the vote to non-landowning white males. So suddenly, controlling politics can't be the province of a few back-room deals, and the ideal of the founding fathers--no permanent political parties--goes out the window because there are literally thousands of new voters. Parties are a means of wrangling them, and van Buren's the one behind it.

So: Republican vs Democrat, Whig vs Free Soil, Know-Nothing vs Tea--it can all be traced back to van Buren. Whether we should be pleased by that, I'm not sure.

"So Everything Went Wrong."

As a transplant to the Commonwealth, I'm always excited to see Virginia in the news, which it's been recently for any number of reasons, mostly not good. Our new Attorney General, one Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, II (side note: when did "Jr." go out of style?) has filed a lawsuit against the federal government and its brand-new health care law, arguing that people who don't choose to buy health insurance aren't participating in interstate commerce (which the federal government has the power to regulate) and therefore aren't under the control of the federal government.

To wit: "The health care reform bill, with its insurance mandate, creates a conflict of laws between the federal government and Virginia. Normally, such conflicts are decided in favor of the federal government, but because we believe the federal law is unconstitutional, Virginia’s law should prevail."

I kept waiting in the days after the announcement of the suit (and the other states' suit) for someone to bring up Andrew Jackson and the Nullification Crisis. Perhaps liberals were too busy high-fiving each other and conservatives were too busy making up Thomas Jefferson quotations to delve into another situation in which a state butted up against the federal government.

Here's a seventh-grader's explanation of the crisis:

"In 1828, Congress passed a tariff. The New England manufacturers had a great plan for the tariff. Now New England could raise prices to sell out imported products (stuff from a different country). Then the southern planters didn't want to pay extra for manufactured goods. So Vice President Calhoun stepped in and said, “We don't have to pay.” So everything went wrong. Then two years later, on April 13, 1830, the Southerners held a dinner for states’ rights. At the dinner, a series of toasts were made. One of the toasts were made by Jackson. He stood up and said for his toast, “Our union must be preserved next to our liberty.” Then Congress lowered the prices of manufacturers’ goods but the Southerners refused it. So in 1833, Jackson got Congress to pay the Force Bill. The Force Bill gave power to the government to use the army and the navy if needed to enforce federal law. A compromise tariff was passed and accepted by South Carolina, the state that threatened to secede. Then the nullification crisis ended."

Here's Meacham on the crisis:

"After the nullification vote in November, Jackson was embarking on perhaps the most delicate mission of his life--how to preserve the Union without appearing so tyrannical and power-hungry that other Southern states might join with South Carolina, precipitating an even graver crisis that could lead to the secession of several states."

It works--the Union stays together for almost another 30 years. But Jackson is vilified in the media; cartoons appear of him wearing a crown, referring to him as "King Andrew" (I assume that this is because neither Hitler nor the Joker exist yet). And when he pulls the deposits out of the Bank of America in favor of a system of smaller banks, he's censured by the Senate, the first time it's ever happened in the 60 years of the country, and he spends the rest of his life trying (and eventually succeeding at) reversing it.

Jackson's a Democrat, maybe the first real one, and he realizes what the Democrats have always realized: that a strong federal government strengthens America, and a strong federal government will always be accused of tyranny. The Whigs and Republicans, as we'll see, campaign on the idea of states' rights and a small federal government, but from Jefferson to Bush, once they take power, they expand the executive branch's reach more and more.

Man of Style

Look, I'm a narrative junkie as much as the next guy, maybe even more so. And I don't think I'm spoiling anything by pointing out that American Lion is a much more exciting book to read than the chosen Van Buren biography mostly because Meacham tells it as a story, quoting so often from letters that it reads sometimes as spoken dialogue (although, honestly, you could probably tell that just from a comparison of the titles).

So I feel a little bad to complain about Meacham's style, especially when I go back to the book itself and realize that he doesn't commit the offense nearly as much as I remembered him doing. Then again, the offense (which I'll reveal in the next paragraph) happened enough that I regarded it as one of the dominant features of the book.

Here it is, from page 176, the end of chapter 12:

"John Quincy Adams was preparing for a trip when word arrived of the mass resignations. Calling it the "explosion at Washington," Adams reported to his son that "people stare--and laugh--and say, what next?"

"It was a good question."

And here it is again, from page 320, the end of chapter 31:

"The great room seemed, for a moment, filled with flakes of snow. It had been a spectacular, enchanting day--of family ties and affection and gifts and grace. But like the snowball skirmish, which Mary Rachel found "exhilarating and inspiring" though "provokingly brief," the day was soon over. Emily saw the guests out, and the tired children were tucked into bed upstairs.

"She would be dead within the year."

Meacham doesn't end all his chapters this way--not even half of them--and yet that style, ending the chapter with a kicker sentence, dun dun DUN!, feels forced, like Meacham's trying to drive as much narrative as possible into his book. And while American Lion's ultimately a very readable book (something it shares with fellow Pulitzer winner John Adams), it shouldn't have to resort to such Saturday-melodramatics.

Lucky Number Eight?

The wheels of this project grind on, and as we move from Founding Fathers to the Great Blank Space Between Jackson and Lincoln, you can keep up by reading our next selection: Joel H. Sibley's Martin van Buren and the Emergence of American Popular Politics, our next presidential biography.

A funny story about the selection process for this book: when it's possible, I check out both my school's copy and the public library's copy of a book, so that E and I can both read at the same time. It's worked fine up until this point. But while I checked out the public library's copy of Sibley's book, I managed to check out Donald Cole's 1984 biography Martin van Buren and the American Political System. I didn't notice this for a month.

That's not exactly Marx Brother-level hysterics, but it should, if nothing else, give you an idea of van Buren's major contribution to American history.