Legal Commentary

With a sort of eerie precision, this year?s Presidential election looks like a replay of the Jackson-Adams race of 1828. Obama is playing the role of the arch-Brahmin and Puritan John Quincy Adams; McCain, the role of Jackson, the populist military hero and voice of outrage against corruption in the capital. But I suspect that the outcome this time around might be different: In the wake of Bush II, JQ Adams? style -- earnest, academic, and trustful of governmental expertise -- might be more to the nation?s liking.

Adams drew support from the Yankee diaspora stretching from Boston across the Burnt-Out District of New York, through the western reserve of Ohio: His followers tended to be richer and better educated than Jackson?s, and they were motivated not only by respect for Adams? education (John Quincy Adams was not only a Harvard grad but also an acknowledged intellectual) and his governmental service but also his moralistic fervor. Adams? New England pietist supporters opposed Cherokee removal, hated slavery, and (later) fought to outlaw booze and mail delivery on the Sabbath. Adams himself was a foreign policy realist but idealistically optimistic about domestic policy: He believed that federal investment in canals, roads, and financial institutions could make the nation rich and united. Most important, like the Federalists who proceeded him and the Whigs who followed him, Adams trusted governmental service as worthy of respect and even deference.

Jackson was the Patriot King of a new American Country Party ? rousing support against corrupt spending and the corrupt bargains of governmental elites in the capital. His support stretched across the Scotch-Irish diaspora from the Appalachians through the Cumberland Gap to Missouri. He would later lead a Presidential attack on national spending for local measures (read: earmarks). No one regarded Jackson as well-educated: He traded not on his expertise but his virtue, manifested by his military service and his contempt (despite his service as a U.S. Senator) for Washington insiders.

Now we have another old military hero and Senator who rages against government spending and corruption, expecting to gain his most solid support from precisely the counties that went for Jackson in 1828 and 1832. We have a Harvard grad running on a platform of renewed, almost moralistic, trust in government, expecting to gain his most solid support from precisely those counties won by Adams. (Here?s betting that, regardless of who wins Ohio, Obama wins the western reserve, stronghold of Whigs in the past and Sherrod Brown today). Adams, of course, got creamed. But we have already had eight years of Jacksonian distrust of cultural elites and contempt for their role in the federal government. With financial institutions collapsing likes houses on fire and a diplomatic tangle that seems more like an impossibly difficult chess problem than an opportunity for a righteous crusade, the Country might be ready for a little of Adams? trust in governmental expertise?