Presidential III

Summary review notes

Jon Meachham’s 

Thomas Jefferson 

The Art of Power

George Washington believed in America as its own party and John Adams was disappointed in its partisanship, “political war was to be the rule the country is so totally given up to the the spirit of party, that not to follow blindfold the one or the other is an inexplicable offense.” While Jefferson believed in bi-partisanship he built his following off of dissent from Washington and Adams policies. This created the first two party system America was to experience having Alexander Hamilton, George Washington and John Adams termed federalists by their followers and monarchical aristocrats by their dissenters and Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe and James Madison as the leaders of the Republican Party who were generally viewed as divisive trouble makers by their political opponents. The Republicans so despised the Federalists that this kind of language by Thomas Jefferson became commonplace, “a little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve and the people recovering their true sight.”

George Washington was unanimously elected as commander in chief of Revolutionary army in 1775 and president of the constitutional convention and president of the United States in 1789.

George Washington was the only president to lead an army in the field.

Washington’s philosophy and policies hinges on the idea of self-interest. His idea of foreign policy for America was only America’s interests.

George Washington on national unity

“A main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad, of your safety, of your prosperity, of that very liberty which you so highly prize.” He would not allow an insurrection to occur in America after the revolutionary war unlike other revolutionary movements in other places.

Alexander Hamilton differed from Washington’s republican ideal of the pursuit of happiness and Jefferson’s desire to enrich average citizens but was rather making a powerful federal government, “no government could give us tranquility and happiness at home which did not possess sufficient stability and strength to make us respectable abroad.” Alexander Hamilton’s American dream was a powerful military nation state.

“All military geniuses like centralization, which increases their forces and all centralizing geniuses like war, which obliges a nation to concentrate many different powers in the hands of the state.” -Tocqueville 

George Washington saw American landowners as the citizens he wanted to enrich and make happy while Thomas Jefferson also saw the value in poorer whites.

While publicly and privately despising many of George Washington’s policies when dealing with Washington as an individual he always had the utmost respect telling Washington, “the confidence of the whole union is centered in you. North and South will hang together if they have you to hang on.”

Abraham Lincoln gave “all honor to Jefferson” for including in his Declaration of Independence the idea of personal liberty that was the reason for the abolition of slavery.

Thomas Jefferson got rid of internal taxes, went to war with Tripoli, started the military academy at West Point, made naturalization of non-citizens easier and got rid of the judiciary act of 1801.

Jefferson embraced and reformed George Washington and John Adams style of republican government.

Jefferson was constantly on guard against Britain regaining authority in the United States.

Lowering taxes, the security of great wealth, and the Louisiana purchase gave Thomas Jefferson an enduring legacy.

In politics, Jefferson established a culture of personal liberty which enabled free inquiry.

Believed in a government that instilled fear and force to keep the bad citizens in check and believed the good citizen capable of minding his duty without these pressures.

Democracy to Jefferson allowed natural leaders to be elected contrary to monarchical government structure which was led by hereditary hierarchy. 

To Jefferson the constitution was made for a peaceful government rather than a hawkish one.

The federalists believed it essential for America to cooperate with one another while the Republicans embraced the idea of personal liberty. So that there was an early split in thought of the essence of being a good American. Happiness to Washington was the fulfillment of moral responsibility to the nation and others while Jefferson offered voting citizens another definition of happiness by giving them whatever they wanted. The American dream to Washington was about reaping the fruits of being a good citizen while the dream Jefferson offered the people was citizens reaping the fruits of a good nation. Self-gratification and pleasure seeking were intolerable to Washington yet Jefferson’s Republicans bread and butter. If someone asks one if they are happy do they think of accomplishing good deeds or having what they want?

While giving people what they wanted was a means to an end to get elected for Republicans many still believed personally in the same values as the Federalist founding fathers, “Adore God. Reverence and cherish your parents. Love your neighbor as yourself and your country more than yourself. Be just. Be true. Murmur not at the ways of Providence. So shall life into which you have entered be the portal to one of eternal and ineffable bliss.” Contrasting, Washington simply believed that following virtue would provide bliss to the individual and nation on this side of the eternal curtain.

Journey I

Before I forget.

Going up Sawtooth base saw many wildflowers on the left side were small blue and yellow flowers in the middle predominantly bunches of white clusters and violet drooping small babies. On the right were yellow flowers halfway up. I found some massive droppings and it led me to the caves to the left. I saw two bears and maybe three. The first two actually looked to be black bear and the third a grizzly. I wasn’t doing anything to hide myself from the bears so naturally I figured if I could see them they could see me. Although the wind was blowing from them to me I figured I ought to steer clear and keep moving up. This was a courageous decision that marks me as having a brave character for the decision was before me to turn back but it was about as repulsive of an option as flinging myself off the cliffs of Sawtooth. More on that later.

Walking horizontally across state mountain rather than ascending it’s peak I found some less threatening wildlife. First among the rocks I found a Uinta chipmunk which has the size and features of a common tree squirrel but the colorization of a least chipmunk. It’s defense was to be silent, still, watchful and wary. Since I was between a cluster of pines and a cluster of rocks I found myself in the Uinta chipmunks pristine habitat since they forage in both. Also the only part of Montana they inhabit is the small area I tromp around in: Paradise Valley, Emigrant Gulch, Tom Miner Basin and Yellowstone.

Another chipmunk caught my attention by barking loudly. This would be the yellow-pine chipmunk. Moving on I tromped through a cluster of pines with a couple feet of snow and a cluster of burnt trees after that. Starting my ascent to the ridge that leads from the summit of state mountain to Sawtooth I got the opportunity to use the rope I brought along. The pass was simple enough but with its greenery and directness being caused by it being a waterway it was a little slippery, steep and unstable.

Happy for the opportunity to do a little bouldering I swung my rope onto a stable boulder and began my fifteen feet semi-vertical climb. Cresting the ridge I saw something running along it ahead of me towards Sawtooth. Looking like a brown squirrel I was puzzled because our common brown squirrel does not inhabit these parts although robins do. Turning to my right disappointed I was unable to classify the mammal was a marmot looking me right in the eye, five feet away on my eye level. This was a yellow-bellied marmot that goes by the nickname of rock chuck.

I reached for my phone to snap a picture and he disappeared before I could reach for my holster. I text Jeff. I let him know my location, ambition and return route. He is the only other person to my knowledge to have first hand knowledge of the area besides me in our group. My phone dies after I send him the message.

Cresting the ridge I continued beneath the cliff that made the ridge, or rather the ridge that made the cliff. On the other side of my ridge I find another opportunity for amateur bouldering with rope. In the cliff was a round hole so I swung my rope up and climbed up into the hole. What I found was not surprising since the caves in the rock are common in the area and my friend Jeff already told me the contents found therein is sheep poop.

In my shallow five foot and ten foot caves I find sheep poop as well as petrified wood deposits. These were not a surprise either since I found them last time I was in the area. The discovery of them being in the caves made my mind make an amateur hypothesis. The caves are formed by the eroding petrified wood trunks in the cliff.

Thinking I may have made a bad tactical decision by hiking along the base of the cliff I was relieved to find a rockslide pass back up onto the ridge.

Continuing along the crest I am pleased to find myself ascending Sawtooth. 

Highlights from Sawtooth include the immense feelings of vertigo as a pica makes its echoing warning chirp from the other side of Sawtooth which makes me look in that direction only to the immense bowl of pine trees miles beneath. It’s mass and density is dizzying. Calling out to me to spread my wings and soar down like a bird of prey and find a prize amongst its boughs. The scripture verse of Satan tempting Jesus to put His Lord God to the test comes to mind and I feel the gravity of my situation. The pica’s chirp continues to add to the sharpness of my senses.

I straddle the rock like a saddle and decide to fall to the right rather than the left if I lose balance or the sediment of the ridge gives way. Then a swallow swoops over my head and begins to circle me twittering all the while. My courage returns to me with this birds hospitality. Adding some levity to my journey rather than the disparate chirps of the lone pica echoing through the bowl. 

I continue and find mountain goat wool and big horn sheep sheds. Big horn sheep have hair like the deer while the mountain goat produces wool. Only at the top of my ascent at a peak made of sharp drop offs and a linear ridge do I find this prize. The goats only inhabit the roughest and most dangerous rock ridges so as to stay out of harms way of aggressive predators.

The Sawtooth ridge is shaped similar to holding up your five fingers together and putting the middle one down into a knuckle with your palm facing away from one’s self. Finding myself atop the pointer finger with no where to go but back the way I came I put myself into a stable sitting position and take in the harvest. The best way to create what I saw up there would be to put our illustrious hand fingers Sawtooth ridge-line between two kitchen bowls of broccoli and imagine your eyes would be on your the crest of your pointer fingernail. 

The swallows number half a dozen to a dozen and come around to visit me as they make the rounds of snatching insects out of the high clean air. These are migratory birds from Mexico. There backs suddenly shimmer in my eye and I realize they are violet-green which makes perfect sense since they are violet-green swallows.

I descend knowing it’s the hardest part of my hike. I take it in stride. Keeping a steady pace I stay wary making sure I do not become over-confident or clumsy after reaching my goal of the summit. There are treacherous rockslides that I traverse that if I walked across like it was a sidewalk I would find myself heading down a laundry shoot that dumps into our precious broccoli kitchen bowl. Twenty feet of rockslide separates me from the edge of the cliff. The drop off would kill me. I choose my steps wisely, slowly and with extreme caution.

The way back was uneventful. On top of state mountain peak I found my beautiful collection of petrified rocks undisturbed and added a couple I had found in the shallow caves. Four elk grazed on a hill on the ridge line below. 

We kept our eyes on each other for the better part of an hour as a bird chimed in to warn the area of my descent. Finally upon the elk they continued to stare at me while one was so comfortable sitting in the grass it took all three of the others to trot away before it decided to get up. I gesticulated wildly with my two walking sticks until they cleared out.

On the path back I saw some dusk strollers from the TREK group that was at B Bar Ranch and pondered my appearance. Untied shoe, large walking stick, mountain weather jacket, skinny jeans, construction worker shoe, no hat, no glasses, sunburnt face, unwashed, fistful of wildflowers and an eagle feather, coat puffed out because of water bottle and rope in inner pockets. No bag. The prophet returns from the mountain. 

A skunk runs up to me as I am down the road from my cabin. I yell at him as though he is my own dog to stay away. He lifts himself up aggressively on his front shoulders looking right at me and I bolt like the true coward I am over a fence and into the neighboring field as he runs off in the opposite direction with his tail lifted showing off his superior stink hole.

Music

Recess from Eternity

Hunter S. Thompson summons the devils of Adolf Hitler, Ayn Rand and Crazy Horse from an American baseball game in hell for a listening party at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. There eating crab cakes are Andrew Jackson and Theodore Roosevelt. The album to be listened to is Eric in Outerspace LP titled ‘Later Days’. Before the party begins GK Chesterton and Winston Churchill come through the door after spending the afternoon playing bridge.

GKC: what a crowd!

AR: you are right on time.

TDR: have a crab cake and a cigar

GKC: thank you 

The room fills with even more smoke as the album begins to play

Hitler: very catchy

CH: never been a better time to have a bad woman

AR: there hasn’t. it’s all the rage

AJ: men have got there kicks from bad women since before 2019

WC: I think I hate someone

Hitler: very noisy 

HST: the sandlot in a song

TDR: ah yes the sandlot

AJ: nothing compares to the live show. This band is for gathering around and remembering the world is still a warm, good place. Like we are now I suppose.

WC: good record for a summer bbq

HST: I could listen to this record alone

AR: it’s not a pop record

HST: it’s not supposed to be

TDR: sounds like pop to me

CH: garage rock is dead. 

AR: so what genre is this Hunter?

HST: friend rock

WC: similar to pet rock?

CH: (guffaws)

TDR: those words

HST: I could do some serious driving alone to this record

AJ: is it third wave rock and roll?

GK: This is the frayed ends of rock and roll.

Presidential II

Home is the Bull Moose

He always wanted the Republicans to be a party that was competitive morally for the common people. He had a determination to offer the common man a ‘square deal’. His Bull Moose party platform was a much more aggressive stance than he had ever taken as president or previous for progressive social policy. Most, if not all, were later introduced and passed by Democrats in the future. He commented that he sympathized more with Woodrow Wilson’s policy than Taft’s in the end. Early on in politics he had decided to push for the right idea even if it meant something more socialist rather than the traditional republican stance of laizzes faire. It would take a real expert on TDR and today’s issues to know how he would feel about the programs being pushed today. A writer from a book from 2002 wrote that if he was alive today, ‘he would slit his wrists’.
I would like to research and write more about the issue of republican principles being a good thing when they are lived up to. Which was his goal.

       Before Ayn Rand and Adolf Hitler there was the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln. This new noble line had a heir named Theodore Roosevelt Jr. TDR’s prodigy was William Howard Taft. TDR refuses to run for a third term. Instead he campaigns successfully to get Taft elected. After his trip to Africa he is ill at ease with the tree he planted. He curses it for not producing figs and the tree dies.

       The bull moose party was formed by Teddie as a progressive third party with him as candidate to combat the machine politics of the two party system. Former President William H. Taft led the Republicans while Woodrow Wilson was at the helm for the Democrats. In an election Teddy nearly won, the fallout was his running took votes from Taft and left the gate open for Wilson’s Democratic victory.

       It was a big deal in the Roosevelt family to not be the kind of privileged people who only did things to show off how privileged they were. The Dad was a child at heart and consistently was active with business, charitable efforts and his family. Like all of the children, Theodore Roosevelt loved his Father, being with him and being loved by him.

      Theodore liked best going on adventures with his Dad. His Father was impressed with his sons ability and he trusted his son. Once when Theodore Roosevelt was away on a trip he remembers his childhood friend Edith Carow and he said it, “stirred up in me homesickness and longing for the past which will come again never, a lack never”.

      Asthma plagued Teedie’s development. He seemed unable to shake the strange ailment until his ranching days in North Dakota. Amidst a most happy childhood, surrounded by a loving Father, mother, siblings and select friends like Edith Carow, he was plunged into the depths of despair and anguish physically, mentally and spiritually by these attacks. When his Father dies he turns to his new wife and when his new wife and mother died on the same day he turns inward and goes west.

       His 2nd marriage to Edith Carow, his success in politics, his children and his failure in politics all seem to come from a different individual than the developing TDR he was in his youth. He is true to a secret plan that he hatched with his Father. He follows the plan to a T.

       Roosevelt begins his political life as a Republican reformer and recruits the able William Howard Taft to be his Vice President. TDR meets ‘muckrakers’ who want to do the same good things as that Teddie wants to do and it creates the ‘progressive movement’. Roosevelt becomes a Republican Progressive and comes to see Taft as a ‘machine Republican’. Finally Roosevelt, after being a successful Republican president, cements his status as a folk hero by leaving the Republican Party after failing to wrench the nomination from Taft and becomes simply a Progressive, who is fit as a Bull Moose. Thus fulfilling his Father's charge, “You must build your body”.

       Teddy is known today not for his failure to win a third term as president under his self-made Bull Moose progressive party, the closest a third party has ever come to winning, or his act of snubbing the Republican Party when they did not give him the nomination for his third term but rather he lives on in the cult of personality. His toothy grin, large mustache and spectacles seem to still have life in 2019. He made conservation and fitness an American tradition. The morality that his father told him to always put first even before health and studies is certainly his biggest contribution to American politics. Each culture has its own idea of morals and TDR gave America the Western cowboy kind, “if given the choice between peace, justice and righteousness, I choose justice and righteousness.”

Goodwin, Doris Kearns. The bully pulpit : Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the golden age of journalism. 2013. Simon & Schuster, Inc. New York, New York.

McCullough, David. Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life, and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt. 1981. Simon & Schuster, Inc. New York, New York.

Presidential

The inherent value on the face of a twenty dollar bill

A book report on Andrew Burstein’s the Passions of Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson is not a face on Mt Rushmore but neither is Crazy Horse. Washington and Jefferson had their slaves, Lincoln had his fighting boys, and TDR had his debasing of the Republican Party. The great men of traditional American democracy crowd the modern intellectuals mind of being the bad boy of modern American society.
      

Andrew Jackson was a mason which means he met the requirements of the society of his time and then some. However he is completely elusive to the modern mind. He had slaves, ordered the slaughter and suffering of many native Americans and consistently engaged in street violence and slander.
      

AJ would rather die than let himself be insulted. He was raised to be his own man. He owned slaves and never backed down. He wanted to be wealthy. Proud of his heritage and adaptable he imitates the savagery of the Native American while maintaining a personal code of civility.
      

A land acquired and cultivated for profit he thinks his way into a military and then political career through actions. Consistently and actively he seeks advancement and investment. He leaves the bench to manage his plantation and business. With each social promotion he becomes more vigilant of defending his personal honor.
      

In the military Jackson steals the political hour through his interpretation of patriotic masculinity as something hard, violent, and sacrificial. Seeing the administration as softened by money since John Adams took office after George Washington up to the current James Madison during the War of 1812 he wins New Orleans in the West while Washington, DC burns in the east.
    

Politically he consistently meets success only to abandon the public sector to pursue his more lucrative private interests. He is elected to Congress and works as a senator and a judge before returning to his estate, the Hermitage, which is not only a plantation and port of trade but by now has a shop, a bar, a horse racetrack and a landing dock for boats within its management.
    

The only thing to bring Andrew Jackson out of his version of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello is the Presidency after the war of 1812. His Election ends the Virginian dynasty that Washington and Jefferson enacted and led with the exception of John Adams. Democrat is the name of Andrew Jackson’s party which is a new title for a new party while the opposition party is termed the whigs and represents the last of the old guard. 
    

 The cabinet is full of cronies but Jackson put them there because he thought they would think like him and would follow what he said. He becomes political enemies with two of the most famous senators of the time, Henry Clay and John Calhoun for two different reasons. First Clay did not want a military chieftain unacquainted with republican theory to succeed him in power and Calhoun did not want a man who he perceived to be and act as a tyrant to succeed him in power.
    

The point of view of Jackson saw the game of politics in Washington as schemes, plots and deception that he wanted nothing to do with. He was there to drain the swamp. Calhoun irked Jackson so much that by the end of his life he thought that not having Calhoun hung for Treason was his biggest regret. Calhoun labels Jackson as a tyrant in the same manner that the entire south labeled Lincoln a tyrant.


The South wanted nullification. Andrew Jackson was appalled. The issue to the South was retaining their rights and their slaves. The issue to Andrew Jackson, although he also had rights and slaves he wanted to retain, was preserving the Union. Although John Calhoun was AJ’s Vice President he resigns his post and returns to his senate in South Carolina to pursue his fiery leadership of the nullification of the Southern states.


In the textbooks of yesterday Jackson was a hero of white democracy and white expansion. The modern mind does not see victory in anything that is racial so that the scholar must reconsider if there is any value in Jackson’s legacy. The scholar must also find value in Washington and Jefferson amidst their slaves, for Lincoln and his slaughter, for Roosevelt and his debasement of the Republican Party.
      

Andrew Jackson is essentially the trailblazer of the civil war and western expansion. With Abraham Lincoln he thought the restraint of Southern Secession most important and its success as madness. With Washington and Jefferson he believed western expansion inevitable and vital by any means. He was a common man like Lincoln but held to a standard of gentility like his founding father predecessors. Only Theodore Roosevelt on Mount Rushmore looks down into the crowds beneath Mt. Rushmore and sees the legacy of Crazy Horse and Andrew Jackson combined into a new people that knows neither class nor race. In the light of day Theodore Roosevelt looks down from his stone monument stoic and thoughtful but in the night he broods alone and shrieks with echoes.