American presidents enjoy certain prerogatives that reveal aspects of their character. One such privilege relates to the placement of iconography in the White House. Conspicuously visible behind Donald J Trump during his East Room briefings is Thomas Sully’s striking portrait of Andrew Jackson. That Trump would see in himself critical aspects of the seventh president should come as no surprise. By all measures an outsider, Jackson seemed to be an enemy of ‘establishment’ Washington and always in opposition. Old Hickory, as he was called strikes this American historian as about as apt a presidential precedent for Trump as one might imagine in the entire American political firmament. The moment in which we find ourselves seems to be one of disruption whose themes seem to converge on the orange-haired outsider who stole the 2016 election from the political class. Separated by two centuries, Trump and Jackson are disruptors who mirror each other in important ways. This talk focuses on the symbolic connections between Jacksonians and today’s MAGA constituency.
Peter Field, a member of the Canterbury History Department and the CHA for almost 20 years, is completing a book on Abraham Lincoln’s political thought. This essay is a moderate chapter in a scathingly critical book on Donald Trump (Palgrave 2020).
Tuesday 16 June, 6pm, lecture theatre A4, drinks and nibbles from 5.30.
