If there’s anything whatever to the claims on Larry Johnson’s blog about a politically damaging video of Michelle Obama’s making nasty comments about race, there’s a pretty fair chance of the candidate’s spouse’s becoming a major election issue to a greater degree than at any time in the country’s history since the presidential election campaign of 1828.
In that election Andrew Jackson’s wife, Rachel, was a prime target and was castigated in very harsh, frequently coarse terms. Mrs. Jackson had been divorced, or so she thought, when she and the future president were married. When it turned out that her divorce had not been finalized, they had to remarry once the proper paperwork had been completed.
On the editorial page of the Cincinnati Gazette, Charles Hammond wrote of Gen. and Mrs. Jackson:
Ought a convicted adulteress and her paramour husband to be placed in the highest offices of this free and christian land?
For those of you who think that recent presidential campaigns have descended into some sort of slough, in the 1828 campaign, the first really populist presidential campaign, nothing was off limits and everybody from Jackson himself to his wife to his mother were subjected to the vilest sort of insult. For example, Jackson’s mother was accused of being a British camp follower, Jackson himself a procurer, and Rachel Jackson a prostitute. There were newspapers and pamphlets completely devoted to the most extraordinary insults and claims about Jackson, his politics, and his parentage—the rough equivalent of today’s bloggers. Today’s campaigns are pale and lily-livered by comparison.
Dave, you’re repeating Jackson’s version, which didn’t really ever make sense. (Rachel was divorced on grounds of adultury; Andrew and Rachel were living before the alleged first marriage). That would suggest at least one thing about scandal, provide an explanation or excuse that brings closure.
In defense of what would become Whigs, I would say that the more responsible crititism united the adultury story with a larger narrative that Jackson (and by extension Jacksonian Democrats) was dominated by his passions. What is the larger narrative about Obama and his wife’s statements? That Obama secretly believes these things too?
Argh, that should be “Andrew and Rachel were living together before the alleged first marriage.”
Yeah, I’m aware of that. That’s the way most Jackson biographers tell the story and have for 150 years. I’ve never checked a John Quincy Adams biographer’s take on the subject. It might be interesting.
Is there a larger narrative? What a good question. Yes, I think there is an overarching narrative but whether Obama opponents can see it or make it stick is another story.
I think the overarching narrative is that Obama is a phony or at least not what he’s being billed as. He’s billed as a “post-racial candidate”. He’s surrounded himself, including at the most intimate level, by racists and the story of his adult life is that of a search for racial identity.