http://www.gprep.org/~sjochs/critique%20of%20jackson.htm
Jackson, a Twenty Dollar President
Thankfully, a dueler like Old Hickory wasn't in the White House during the Cuban missile crisis.

By Alonzo L. Hamby
Wednesday, November 29, 2000 12:01 a.m. EST 
Andrew Jackson was "a man of violent temper and rather moderate talents," elected only because of an exaggerated aura of military glory, Alexis De Tocqueville wrote in the first volume of his classic "Democracy in America." Tocqueville, who had met Jackson added: "Nothing in his whole career ever proved him qualified to govern a free people." By and large, influential historians of the 19th century, men who usually came from the upper crust, agreed. The Jackson they depicted was arbitrary, authoritarian, ignorant, and devoid of much accomplishment, an icon to Democratic party faithful, but hardly a national hero. Tocqueville said it this way: "[I]ndeed, the majority of the enlightened classes of the Union has always opposed him."
Yet, by 1948 Jackson was labeled as a "great" president. Harvard historian, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., conducted perhaps the first presidential greatness poll in that year, his sample of a few dozen historians planted "great" next to Jackson's name. In 1962, Schlesinger conducted another poll, surveying 75 scholars. Jackson was once again placed near the top, this time in the "near-great" category and pronounced him the 6th best president in American history, ahead of Theodore Roosevelt, James K. Polk, and Harry S. Truman. The results reflected the impact of the great depression. To a generation of liberal intellectuals that had enthusiastically revived the idea of democracy, Jackson's identity as an advocate of the common man seemed a precursor of Franklin Roosevelt's, his fight against the Bank of the United States an analogue to the New Deal's battles with Wall Street. Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed the parallels. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., codified them with his acclaimed "The Age of Jackson" (1946), which was awarded the Pulitzer prize in history. The Schlesinger, Sr., polls confirmed this trend.
Memories wane, and perspectives change. Jackson is still invariably ranked among the top third or so of American presidents, although sometimes just barely. C-Span's poll, released earlier this year, placed him fourteenth among the forty-one chief executives through Bill Clinton. The WSJ-Federalist Society ranking strikes one as remarkably kind, placing him 6th. From the perspective of the early 21st. century, there are good reasons for both liberals and conservatives to place Jackson in the average range. In fact, it is all too easy to argue that his presidency did more harm than good to the young nation he led for eight years.
Some presidents with checkered records, Thomas Jefferson and Woodrow Wilson come to mind, receive generous evaluations out of a sense that they possessed greatness of spirit and character. Jackson appears to have been an unreflective soul whose psyche overflowed with rage. One may admire the iron resolve of a man who in his earlier life had fought a duel with a feared marksman, allowed his opponent to fire first, taken a bullet in the chest, then had himself taken aim and fatally shot his antagonist. However, the admiration has to be mixed with a certain chilling horror. The event foreshadowed the way in which Jackson would fight his political battles. The Bank of the United States, he told Martin Van Buren, "is trying to kill me, but I will kill it." He reputedly said on his deathbed that his only regrets were not having shot Henry Clay and hanged John C. Calhoun. The story possesses at least a poetic truth.
He conducted foreign policy with the same attitude. Pursuing a $1 million claim against France from the Napoleonic era, he asked congress to authorize "reprisals against French property," broke diplomatic relations, and ordered the navy readied for war. The WSJ-Federalist Society poll puts him twelve places above John F. Kennedy, but we may all be relieved that it was Kennedy who managed the Cuban missile crisis.
Jackson's decision to block renewal of the congressional charter of the Bank of the United States is perhaps the most telling event of his administration. The Bank, modeled on the example of the Bank of England, functioned roughly as the Federal Reserve of its time, checking the propensity of many state-chartered banks to issue funny money. Jackson's demagogic veto alleged that the Bank was a bastion of wealth and special privilege, but much more salient in his thinking was a wicked brew of political calculation and economic primitivism. The Bank's leadership was associated with the opposition Whig party; conversely, to attack it was to win the support of many state-chartered institutions that resented its regulatory hand. Jackson himself, moreover, simple-mindedly disliked banks, paper money, and all the early signs of modern finance capitalism. The Bank's demise left the state-chartered banks free to enlarge the money supply in a way that fueled an inflationary boom, culminating in catastrophic bust just as Jackson left office. For the next three quarters of a century, the nation, lacking a central bank, was left acutely vulnerable to such cycles.
The removal of the civilized Indian tribes from their fertile lands in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi would have happened with or without Jackson. The way in which he went about it is nonetheless revealing. Where his predecessor, John Quincy Adams, had possessed genuine concern for the rights of the tribes, Jackson behaved as if he were dealing with hostile savages. When the Supreme Court upheld the rights of the Cherokee nation against encroachments by the state of Georgia, he refused to honor the judgement, commenting, "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it." The remark says much about Jackson's prejudices, his lack of respect for inconvenient principles of justice, and his political savvy. Indian removal brought him the support of much of the deep South against South Carolina's separatism. His administration enforced appalling migrations to Oklahoma. In December, 1831, Tocqueville watched a band of Choctaws cross the icy Mississippi; he later wrote that he had been "the witness of sufferings that I have not the power to portray." Few Americans had much regard for the Indians. Nonetheless, Jackson's attitude was callous and inhumane, even by the standards of his own time.
Let us not deny Jackson his moments. Although he was a neo-Jeffersonian states-righter, he adamantly defended the Union when South Carolina, in protest against the tariff, threatened nullification and secession. Even here, however, he did not deal with a genuine grievance; instead, he let his Whig rival, Henry Clay, do the heavy lifting of negotiating a compromise to reduce the tariff.
While Jackson may have been the catalyst for the emergence of a new style of democratic mass politics, he was not its creator. Nor would many of us today consider the product attractive with its elevation of the spoils system to an egalitarian principle, its calculated rabble-rousing, and its introduction of what a later age would call "the continuous campaign." His ranking ahead of numerous presidents of larger spirit and greater accomplishment thus remains a mystery. Perhaps it is a testament to the power of the idealized portrait on the $20 bill.
Mr. Hamby is Distinguished Professor of History at Ohio University.