A logical coping mechanism for enduring this Administration is finding other US Presidents with similar deficiencies, who acted with comparable incompetence and disdain for the national interest. Identifying such examples, the thinking goes, assuages anxiety because, after all, if we neared the edge of the cliff before and lived to vote another day, we can do it again. Unprecedented circumstances produce higher anxiety levels than predicaments one can equate with past events we survived as a going concern, even if they were far from our finest hour. Been there, done that beats the road not yet traveled every time.
Andrew Johnson never spent a day in school, period. Born to abject poverty in Raleigh, NC, his father died when he was very young, leaving his mother, a laundress, to support her two children with a fully insufficient income stream. Instead of school, Johnson became an apprentice, and while dedicated to learning, which spared him illiteracy and actually made him a servicable orator, Abraham Lincoln’s successor had no formal education.
Johnson’s fealty to the Union’s cause – he was the only Southern Senator who didn’t resign his seat as war neared – appears to be rooted in resentments poverty instilled in him; he viewed secession as the seditious brainchild of entitled plantation owners, bent on maintaining their free means of production. And while Johnson never wavered in his opposition to the South’s agenda, he was just as much of a nasty racist as the next guy, actively opposing the most modest reparation initiatives, as well as the 14th Amendment. As Frederick Douglas accurately observed on Inauguration Day, 1865, as Johnson was sworn in as Vice-President, “…whatever he is, he is no friend of the black race.”
Black misery, either as slaves or freed men with no assets or prospects amongst bitter vanquished white populations, never concerned Johnson. It’s not much of a stretch to say, while Lincoln understood the critical importance of melding former slaves into American life as citizens rather than property, Johnson could not have cared less. His tenure as President was dedicated to undoing most all of his predecessor’s agenda… sound familiar?
When Johnson persisted in trying to push out Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who bitterly opposed his reconstruction policies, The Party of Lincoln had had enough. The GOP-dominated Congress impeached Johnson, and it was left to the Senate to spare him dismissal by one vote. Regardless, few historians will argue against the idea of Johnson as one of our worst Chief Executives, proactively responsible for Jim Crow and corrosive racial estrangement that haunts us still.
One more thing… while in office, Johnson embarked on a national “Swing Around the Circle” tour, an itinerary of 20 political rallies comprising rambling monologues opposed to all things benefitting former slaves, while labeling Republican Congressional opponents as enemies of the people. In fact, in February, 1866, on the occasion of George Washington’s Birthday, Johnson addressed backers at the White House, and in an unhinged, and many thought drunken soliloquy, boasted more than 200 times of his achievements as POTUS. Nobody could recall ever having witnessed a President create such a spectacle.
Trump is fond of claiming Andrew Jackson as a predecessor he admires and emulates. Although Trump and any knowledge or appreciation of history is like chicken crap to chicken salad, it seems he can indeed claim an uncanny likeness to a past President named Andrew. Though Trump and Johnson share ugly personal characteristics, not to mention overt delight in dividing the country they each took an oath to unite, Johnson was at least a self-made man, rising from destitution to the highest office in the land. What he would have done with his talents, and vices, if he instead had a father like Fred Trump, who funneled him the equivalent of near $500 million throughout his life is anybody’s guess. We know what his historical soulmate did… lost most of it, declaring bankruptcy time and again. And then thanked his dying father by attempting to seize control of all of his holdings, not to mention created a false biography that lied he only borrowed and quickly paid back a mere $1 million. Like everybody else but Trump’s wretched core, it’s a good bet Johnson would have found such scurrilous ingratitude unfathomable.
So there it is, we have sorta been here before. Our President most closely resembles a man every historian worth his/her research agrees is one of US history’s very worst White House occupants. Do what you will with the information. Of course the American electorate never elected Johnson POTUS like they did Trump, and his steadfast support of the Union in the face of an exodus by all of his southern peers in the Senate speaks to the presence of honor and courage nobody remotely imagines Trump possesses. Yet and still, we can at least grasp for the solace that comes with believing some precedent for awfulness exists and everything the Donald does to sully his office is not uncharted. It’s perverse, it’s sad and pitiable, it’s thoroughly inadequate and won’t lead to much of a decrease in Xanax abuse…. but it’s something. These days, with this monstrosity, even cold comfort is better than nothing at all. BC