NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – In his first days in the White House, Donald Trump hung a portrait of Andrew Jackson in the Oval Office and likened his new administration to that of the snowy-haired man pictured on the $20 bill.
Trump is likely to revisit Jackson’s legacy Wednesday when he lays a wreath at Jackson’s tomb at his historic home in Nashville known as the Hermitage. The president also plans to speak at a Nashville rally to replace former President Barack Obama’s signature health care law.
A top Jackson biographer says the comparison of Trump and Jackson is “not the cleanest analogy,” but the seventh president offers the 45th a convenient example of “an unconventional presidency trying to accomplish big things.”
Trump has echoed Jackson’s outsider message to rural America by pledging to be a voice for “forgotten men and women.” The comparison aims to show that anti-establishment leaders can become transformative presidents, said Jon Meacham, who wrote a 2008 biography of Jackson titled “American Lion.”
Jackson first won fame as a military commander in the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, when he led an American force that prevented a much larger British army from seizing the city and threatening the rest of the Louisiana Purchase. He was elected in 1828 as the right to vote was expanded to all white men, not just property owners, and he brought new voter groups into the fold.