POLITICS

The Change Agent

Our politics are rooted in the grand, complicated presidency of Andrew Jackson.

By Jon Meacham | NEWSWEEK
Published Nov 1, 2008
From the magazine issue dated Nov 10, 2008

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  • Posted By: whartn @ 04/22/2009 10:08:15 PM

    The article on Lula!s Brasil was informative and to the point of reform in Brasil.It is an omission that you made no mention of David Goldman`s 5 yr run around by the Brasilian elite.Brasil is the only country in which both houses of congress have demanded action.I believe the elite in Brasil avoid unpleasantries by no decision for long periods of time.The rich and previlege can afford the delay.
    I believe Secty Clinton/US Congress demand and answer by June !st.
    William E Hartnett

  • Posted By: misskaren @ 04/21/2009 2:18:30 PM

    Congratulations. You did good, Mr. Meacham.

  • Posted By: phyllis AZ @ 04/21/2009 12:20:27 AM

    Hi Jon,

    Congratulations on your Pulitzer Prize for Andrew Jackson in the White House well deserved it???s a wonderful book. When reading historical biography???s I like to play connects the dots. I believe without Andrew Jackson there would be no State of Israel again congratulation can???t wait until your next book.

    Best to you and your family
    PhylAZ

  • Posted By: Nowforsomemoretruth @ 11/03/2008 11:47:57 AM

    And lets not forget the Court, and decisions like Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005).

    What does redistributive mean. Well, remember that it was the liberal Left-Wing Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court that brought us this little jewel, holding that the government could take your real property, like your home, not for public use like a road or school, but to give to another private individual, such as a political contributor or other party hack or interest group. You remember this one.

    Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005), was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States involving the use of eminent domain to transfer land from one private owner to another to further economic development. The case arose from the condemnation by New London, Connecticut, of privately owned real property so that it could be used as part of a comprehensive redevelopment plan. The Court held in a 5-4 decision that the general benefits a community enjoyed from economic growth qualified such redevelopment plans as a permissible "public use" under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the majority opinion; he was joined by Justices Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.

    The decision was widely criticized by American politicians and the general public. Many members of the general public viewed the outcome as a gross violation of property rights and as a misinterpretation of the Fifth Amendment, the consequence of which would be to benefit large corporations at the expense of individual homeowners and local communities. Some in the legal profession construe the public's outrage as being directed not at the interpretation of legal principles involved in the case, but at the broad moral principles of the general outcome.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London

    • Posted By: History 101 @ 04/20/2009 7:56:31 PM

      That sounds funny. Why, a republican was president and it was not until 2006 when the republican lost control of the house and sentate. Your Kelo, vs City of New London , 545 U.S. 469 (2005) has the wrong date. Republicans were still in control. hahahah your funny. Nowforsomemoretruth, climb out from under your rock and tell me some more that I can laugh at.

      • Posted By: Lee Holmes @ 04/20/2009 8:55:00 PM

        This matters not,as the Executive and the Judicial are two differant entities, separated by the Constitution. The fact remains that it was the liberal bloc of the high court with Kennedy as swing that approved these private property takings.

        • Posted By: History 101 @ 04/20/2009 9:09:05 PM

          Or do you mean like the Imminent domain that the supreme court said that business have the right of imminent domain as long as it is in the best interest of the community. That was ruled under a republican. hahaha you right wing Oligarchist. You republicans are great and nice

  • Posted By: Dolores Fleming @ 11/03/2008 9:21:37 AM

    I hope and pray Obama does not win.If he does the Hamas will be selebrating.We are already deep in dept and Obama is promissing the moon.If Obama wins he has said he will take nuclear off the table,no more B51s and our bombers in the air which have protected this nation will fly no more.We will be blown right off this earth.Obama dopes not like our national anthem.He does not like the words bomba bursting in air..Can you imagine blacks ruling this country.Give them an inch and they will take a mile.Obama still goes to the same church that preached hatred for this country.they have a new preacger and for preacger right they built him a million dollar houes in the elite part of ChicagoYou tell me how Obama being up in washingto as a senator for three years and he is going to run this country,He even has said that he never got into washington but he knew it needed a change.What was he doing up there just saying PRESENT so he wouldn't have to answer hard Owestions..he has only voted for one thing for the united states to help Kenya where he was born and was adopted in Inddddonesia..Obama better come clean and let the american people know he ccannot be president of these united states.

    • Posted By: History 101 @ 04/20/2009 7:53:13 PM

      By your comment Dolora, do you know where Mccain was born. Can you say the Panama canal zone. Oops he must not be able to be president either, he was not a american citizen. Oops my mistake, he CAN because the Panama Canal was a US held Military Zone, just like a US ship, or other military bases, but dolora I bet you did not know that. Keep watching Foxnews and maybe take a spelling class.

    • Posted By: NeitherLeftNorRight @ 11/03/2008 1:51:28 PM

      Wow, well put. I can tell that you're very well educated on these issues. Especially regarding the birthplace of an American presidential candidate. And I have a lot of respect for your ability to divine who it is that Hamas is rooting for as well. If only we could all go into the voting booth with the wealth of knowledge that you have under your cap!

  • Posted By: Nowforsomemoretruth @ 11/03/2008 10:18:29 PM

    In the exchange with "Joe the plumber" Obama unintentionally revealed that he really is as radical as his early political mentors and acquaintances, Davis, Ayers, Wright, Khalidi etc., (gee, there sure seem to be a lot of them) and that he is into the failed economic policy of wealth redistribution. Now there is absolute proof. In 2001, Obama, the "community organizer" turned legislator, said in an interview:

    "And I think one of the tragedies of the civil rights movement was that the civil rights movement became so court-focused, I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and organizing activities on the ground that are able to bring about the coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change, and in some ways we still suffer from that,"

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iivL4c_3pck

    2001 Chicago Public Radio Interview.

    Obama's tax and spending plans alone would be bad enough, but add Reid and Pelosi to the mix, with the three of them controlling both houses of Congress and the executive branch without any effective restraint, and you have something that should causes concern even among moderate Democrats.
    See Wall Street Journal: A Liberal Supermajority:

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122420205889842989.html

    Indeed, some democrats are publically saying as much. See Barney Franks comments on the news, including face the nation last week, stating essentially that Democrats in Congress intend to greatly raise taxes and go on a spending spree.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1Mazjm_A5k

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJGnSAlqjoU

    See http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/23617.html

    Obama's ill-conceived programs will require him to tax, and his health care plan alone is a substantial hidden tax on all business, large an small. In reality, it does not really matter who he taxes, those taxes are going to be passed through the economy. He has to tax, because it is they only way he can pay for his massive social engineering experiments. Any first year economics student knows that taxation is a tool used to contract an economy experiencing inflation, because it reduces demand by reducing the amount of money individuals and businesses have to spend. It is contractionary, which is exactly what you do not want to do when the problem is that the economy is contracting already into recession. Like Hoover and FDR, Obama's plans will only make it worse for longer.

    See e.g. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/03/opinion/main4499465.shtml
    And
    http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx


    The democrats failed social engineering policies in the housing market are what brought us to ruin. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr1M1T2Y314&feature=related
    Even Bill Clinton says so. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsynspIqAoE
    Obama and a supermajority of Democrats simply is not the change we need, nor is it change we can afford.

    • Posted By: History 101 @ 04/20/2009 7:49:25 PM

      Does any one else think it is funny that Nowforsomemoretruth always has something bad to say about President Obama and the Democrats but never has said anything bad about the former President Bush. Nowforsomemoretruth, do you have a shrine in your mansion full of REPUBLICAN "stuff". Come on, and wake up bush,cheney, wolfeshits, and rove are not angels by any means. Come on waterboarding two suspects 288 times. I guess it did not dawn on bush, cheney, wolfeshits and rove that the other 287 times before, the suspects did not CRACK. Weapons of Mass destruction in Iraq. Oops we missed those. Bin Laden Oops we missed him too. Nowforsomemoretruth, if you want I can keep going. However, I would be willing to bet your watching those right wing nut jobs on Foxnews or listening to Limpbaugh., Nowforsomemoretruth, your a funny man or women and you make me laugh please keep posting, I always need a laugh. hahah

  • Posted By: ttate @ 11/04/2008 6:46:07 PM

    Wow, so apparently those commenting here didn't read the article or they did and absorbed nothing from it. How sad that in many respects our country, and many of our citizens have not progressed any farther than Andrew Jackson's time.

  • Posted By: Nowforsomemoretruth @ 11/03/2008 10:57:07 PM

    The problem with Obama is a simple one. One association does not a radical make. But in Obama's case, the list of left-wing radical mentors and associates is seemingly endless, (Davis, Ayers, Wright, Khalidi , etc., etc.) with a new revelation practically every day. With that trend, a picture begins to emerge, and that picture is that Obama is as steeped, not in just left-wing political thought, but in radical left-wing economic and race ideology, to the same extent that Pat Robertson was steeped in the ideology of the radical Religious Right. I would not have voted for Pat Robertson for dog catcher, and for similar reasons, I will not vote for Obama.

  • Posted By: Nowforsomemoretruth @ 11/03/2008 7:54:39 PM

    Alaska Personal Board report out today finds no violation by Governor Palin.

    http://www.cnn.com/video/live/live_asx.html?stream=stream3

  • Posted By: Nowforsomemoretruth @ 11/03/2008 6:26:13 PM

    Obama's plan for jobs on Pennsylvania, Virginia , West Virginia , Kentucky, Tennessee, and other states, and Obama's plan for dealing with the high cost of energy, including electricity generation.

    An audiotape of an interview Barack Obama did in January 2008 with The San Francisco Chronicle has surfaced in the final days of the presidential campaign. On the tape Obama tells the interviewer, . " so if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. . . It's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted."

    Now, why would Obama say that in San Francisco and not Pennsylvania? We have seen this before, yes? Something about guns and religion.

    And why did Newsweek take their story on the Pennsylvania campaign down yesterday after this story broke?

  • Posted By: Concerned Canadian @ 11/03/2008 5:22:44 PM

    Obama said he denounced and left the radical Trinity United Church but it???s not true!!

    Obama has Trinity United pastor Rev Ottis Moss accompanying him on his campaign!!

  • Posted By: Concerned Canadian @ 11/03/2008 5:20:55 PM

    Obama said he denounced and left the radical Trinity United Church but it???s not true!!

    Obama has Trinity United pastor Rev Ottis Moss accompanying him on his campaign!!

  • Posted By: Concerned Canadian @ 11/03/2008 4:04:45 PM

    More and more disturbing stuff on Obama's past and his real intentions are just starting to surface.

    As I predicted over a year ago .... Obama is a big fraud and America is being duped !!

  • Posted By: NeitherLeftNorRight @ 11/03/2008 1:44:58 PM

    This is a very interesting article about a very interesting and important figure from our nation's history. WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?? None of the comments below have anything at all to do wih the article they're attached to. It's a good thing I didn't come here looking for intelligent conversation about our great nation's history and what we can learn from the advances and missteps of our past leaders.

  • Posted By: kunino @ 11/03/2008 1:43:43 PM

    Let's not forget the Bush II modifications: Americans are a good deal more suspicious of everybody than they've been since World War II, much of this without reason. It's been in the Bush interest to pump up the fear as much as possible -- 2004 re-election hung upon it. He saw his dooty to the GOP, and he dood it, with effects we're seeing this month. Remember those multicolored DHS danger warnings that scared folks frequently, and never came to anything?

    I know there are people out there who hate America and wish to harm it. There are lots more of them now in, say, Iraq than there were before we invaded that nation on dishonest grounds. Net outcome: to battle terrorists, the current president has increased their number, virtually busted the US military and libeled quite a number of completelty blameless Muslims -- the current opinion of involved US government and military officials -- as the worst of the worst, and all trained killers. The dishonesty of all this has much reduced world affection for the United States, and desire to trust and help it. Quite a legacy.

  • Posted By: rube @ 11/03/2008 1:07:33 PM

    Pres. Bush never felt anything - hes an ego centric driven plutocrat.
    Rememebr Mr. president wherever you go in the future you can bet there will be millions of Americans
    that lost their retirement, their house equity, their stock portfolios, their sons and daughters and your social economic melt down has just begun! Self righteous reactionary who used god name for his own vanity his own narcissistic monerging image of the world! The gargoyle with no lips and pointy ears came, he saw, and he did his best to ruin! All he has left his his post president life. Will he give his time and effort for the betterment of the U.S and the earth? I would bet the house he will live the rest of his life solely filling his pockets! How neoconservative of you Mr. President!

  • Posted By: Nowforsomemoretruth @ 11/03/2008 12:52:58 PM

    Funny how, despite Pennsylvania being such an important race, Newsweek took down their story on it yesterday after Obama???s comments about his plan to bankrupt the Coal Industry surfaced.

  • Posted By: gobbledegook @ 11/03/2008 12:34:29 PM

    PASSPHRASE: "I'm Southern by grace of God." But remember, if that dog don't hunt he ain't never caught a rabbit and he ain't no friend of Elvis, the once and future King. Even if he *is* Gomer.

  • Posted By: Concerned Canadian @ 11/03/2008 11:39:15 AM

    More and more disturbing stuff on Obama's past and his real intentions are just starting to surface.

    As I predicted over a year ago ..... Obama is a big fraud and America is being duped !!

  • Posted By: Nowforsomemoretruth @ 11/03/2008 11:21:18 AM

    In the exchange with "Joe the plumber" Obama unintentionally revealed that he really is as radical as his early political mentors and acquaintances, Davis, Ayers, Wright, Khalidi etc., (gee, there sure seem to be a lot of them) and that he is into the failed economic policy of wealth redistribution. Now there is absolute proof. In 2001, Obama, the "community organizer" turned legislator, said in an interview:

    "And I think one of the tragedies of the civil rights movement was that the civil rights movement became so court-focused, I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and organizing activities on the ground that are able to bring about the coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change, and in some ways we still suffer from that,"

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iivL4c_3pck

    2001 Chicago Public Radio Interview.

    Obama's tax and spending plans alone would be bad enough, but add Reid and Pelosi to the mix, with the three of them controlling both houses of Congress and the executive branch without any effective restraint, and you have something that should causes concern even among moderate Democrats.
    See Wall Street Journal: A Liberal Supermajority:

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122420205889842989.html

    Indeed, some democrats are publically saying as much. See Barney Franks comments on the news, including face the nation last week, stating essentially that Democrats in Congress intend to greatly raise taxes and go on a spending spree.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1Mazjm_A5k

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJGnSAlqjoU

    See http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/23617.html

    Obama's ill-conceived programs will require him to tax, and his health care plan alone is a substantial hidden tax on all business, large an small. In reality, it does not really matter who he taxes, those taxes are going to be passed through the economy. He has to tax, because it is they only way he can pay for his massive social engineering experiments. Any first year economics student knows that taxation is a tool used to contract an economy experiencing inflation, because it reduces demand by reducing the amount of money individuals and businesses have to spend. It is contractionary, which is exactly what you do not want to do when the problem is that the economy is contracting already into recession. Like Hoover and FDR, Obama's plans will only make it worse for longer.

    See e.g. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/03/opinion/main4499465.shtml
    And
    http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx


    The democrats failed social engineering policies in the housing market are what brought us to ruin. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr1M1T2Y314&feature=related
    Even Bill Clinton says so. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsynspIqAoE
    Obama and a supermajority of Democrats simply is not the change we need, nor is it change we can afford.

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