In the White House, it’s been called the Swing Around the Circle, a planned rally tour to persuade middle-of-the-road voters of the President’s moderation, and of the extremism of the opposition.
But not all plans …well… go off as planned.
It isn’t difficult to see the pattern.
In the White House, they thought of calling it the Swing Around the Circle. The plan was to hold rallies that would turn public opinion in his favor.
The problem? The President always going off script.
It isn’t as if there wasn’t plenty of warning. It’s almost forgotten now, but one rally was devoted to the birthday of George Washington. The President gave a speech, but it wasn’t THE speech. He kept wandering off track, making it all about him. Those who kept count stopped when he got to 200 references to himself. He used the event to attack specific opponents: Congressman Stevens, Senator Sumner, and liberal critic Wendell Phillips. Everything was personal.
The pattern cannot be more clear.
The Swing Around the Circle was supposed to be different. The usual rallies to energize the base would be replaced with an effort to show voters that he was not that bad, that he could bring the country together.
The behind-the-scenes plan was to divide moderates from those he could call extremists: the other side.
He departed from the script, as always. But it went okay in Baltimore, and Philadelphia. Crowds were enthusiastic. Even New York went especially well. Then it went downhill.
In Cleveland, he taunted peaceful protesters. He accused his opponents of wanting to do him violence. He urged followers to hang members of Congress who opposed him. In St. Louis, he compared himself to Jesus Christ. His critics, he said, were the same as Christ’s betrayers.
Can we not see the pattern?
He refused to condemn white violence. In Chicago, he accused those in favor of minority rights of causing white mass killings in Louisiana and Tennessee.
His increasingly incendiary language provoked his supporters. Violence followed his rallies. In Indianapolis a man was killed.
The President of the United States, the one known for all but endorsing white violence, the self-involved, egocentric, violent tempered, racist took office when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.
What we recognize as stains on American history, the terrorist attacks on newly freed slaves, the denial of voting rights, the lynchings, all were taking place under the approving gaze of President Andrew Johnson.
Professor of History Annette Gordon-Reed, of Harvard University, contrasts the Lincoln and Johnson presidencies. She gives as dispassionate an overview as I can imagine, suggesting a failure of potential.
And then we had Johnson, who was not up to the task of leading people through the hope of the peace, the time of peace, and the time when there could have been a different story about race and America. So it’s the President of lost opportunities.
He’s the President of lost opportunities because he had a chance but he didn’t take it, because his character, because of the way he was raised, because of his determination to live by the precepts of white supremacy. And that’s what makes it all so tragic.
Professor Annette Gordon-Reed, Harvard University
Her interpretation may be on the sympathetic side.
If he was not the worst President in our nation’s history, he is certainly a candidate.
He was a virulent white supremacist. He was an ardent states’ rightist.
David Blight, The Civil War and Reconstruction Era
David Blight is a Professor of History at Yale, who has made a special study of that era.
He was never anti-slavery. He was not only not anti-slavery, he was an open racist. He believed the United States should remain, in his own words, “a white man’s country forever.”
And he had a disposition that could best charitably be
described as hypersensitive and obstinate.
That last is something with which historian Howard Means agrees.
Yes, he was very thin-skinned. He took just about everything personally. He remembered taunts and jeers from decades gone by. He never forgot the sound of somebody criticizing him.
Howard means, interviewed on CBS
Sound familiar?
Donald Trump sees his model, the one he imagines himself to emulate, as earlier President Andrew Jackson.
The mean spirited orator of race-based hatred, the proven racist, Andrew Johnson strikes me as a closer match. Andrew and Donald are not twins, to be sure. The times are different.
We do not know if Andrew Johnson would have held the same hatred toward specific ethnicities or religions. There is little evidence of his attitude toward Mexicans, South Americans, or Muslims. Would he have delighted in the deliberate separation of families? Or the caging of small children?
His history suggests that, at very least, he would not have objected.
The pattern does seem clear. If I could see ghosts, I would not be surprised to spot Andrew Johnson at a Trump rally, cheering with ethereal enthusiasm.
At last, a time and place he can belong.
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