rarely has reputable opinion in the u.s. been so united about the unfitness of the nominee of a major party for the presidency. donald trump has been castigated as ignorant, crude, impulsive, mendacious, narcissistic, fascistic and a dozen other pejoratives. leaders of both parties have called him dangerous to the interests of america and the peace of the world. mr. trump deserves much that has been said about him. but should he be elected, he wouldn<u+2019>t be the first president to take office amid predictions that the end was nigh. the criticisms of mr. trump<u+2019>s character and temperament aren<u+2019>t so different from those hurled at several of his predecessors<u+2014>some of whom proved the critics quite wrong. take thomas jefferson, whose opponents branded him a mad jacobin for his support of the french revolution and warned that his election would place the country<u+2019>s morals in grave peril. <u+201c>murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will all be openly taught and practiced,<u+201d> an anti-jefferson paper predicted in the fall of 1800. <u+201c>the air will be rent with the cries of distress, the soil will be soaked with blood, and the nation black with crimes.<u+201d> yet the u.s. survived two terms of his presidency<u+2014>and doubled in size thanks to his visionary purchase of louisiana. establishment figures again wrung their hands during andrew jackson<u+2019>s campaign. the former general became a hero for his stunning victory over the british at new orleans in 1815, which brought the otherwise dismal war of 1812 to a triumphant close. but jackson<u+2019>s rivals called him a <u+201c>military chieftain<u+201d> and warned that he would subvert the american republic as caesar had subverted its roman forerunner. in retirement, jefferson shook his head in worry as jackson appealed directly to voters. <u+201c>i feel very much alarmed at the prospect of seeing general jackson president,<u+201d> he told daniel webster. <u+201c>he is one of the most unfit men i know of for such a place. he has had very little respect for laws or constitutions<u+2026>he is a dangerous man.<u+201d> the doomsayers seemed on target at jackson<u+2019>s inauguration. the longtime washington resident margaret bayard smith had watched presidents since jefferson come and go, but she had never witnessed anything like the brawl that celebrated old hickory<u+2019>s installation. <u+201c>a rabble, a mob, of boys, negros, women, children, scrambling, fighting, romping,<u+201d> she wrote a friend. <u+201c>cut glass and china to the amount of several thousand dollars had been broken in the struggle to get to the refreshments.<u+201d> joseph story, a supreme court justice, was similarly appalled: <u+201c>the reign of king <u+2018>mob<u+2019> seemed triumphant,<u+201d> he said. but despite these laments, the crockery broken during the jackson years was chiefly physical (at that inaugural bash) rather than constitutional. jackson proved to be the doughtiest defender of the constitution in its first 70 years when he moved to crush south carolinians aiming to block collection of a tariff that they didn<u+2019>t like. <u+201c>please give my compliments to my friends in your state,<u+201d> he told a south carolina congressman. <u+201c>and say to them, that if a single drop of blood shall be shed there in opposition to the laws of the united states, i will hang the first man i can lay my hand on engaged in such treasonable conduct, upon the first tree i can reach.<u+201d> the south carolinians reconsidered. <u+2018> one of the most unfit men i know of for such a place. <u+2019> alarm of other sorts has greeted some presidents who gained office by the death of their predecessors. <u+201c> chester arthur <u+2014>president?!<u+201d> was the sentiment commonly spluttered when james garfield succumbed to an assassin<u+2019>s bullet in 1881. his vice president was a political hack even by gilded age standards; arthur was added to the 1880 republican ticket for the sole purpose of spreading the spoils among warring gop factions. but as president, something approaching civic conscience surfaced in arthur, and he signed a landmark law that dramatically curtailed the spoils system. two decades later, the new york republican boss thomas platt solved a problem within the ranks of his party machine by foisting theodore roosevelt, the state<u+2019>s rambunctious governor, onto the gop<u+2019>s 1900 ticket alongside william mckinley. the ohio boss and mckinley mentor mark hanna warned darkly, <u+201c>don<u+2019>t any of you realize that there<u+2019>s only one life between that madman and the presidency?<u+201d> as president, however, roosevelt reined in monopolies like standard oil and insisted on a square deal for workers and consumers<u+2014>and won the nobel peace prize by mediating an end to the russo-japanese war. the politicos and the moguls never forgave him. when tr left the white house and headed off on an african safari, the tycoon j.p. morgan reportedly lifted a glass and declared, <u+201c>america expects that every lion will do his duty.<u+201d> another set of warnings accompanied the rise of ronald reagan, who was both excoriated as a dangerous extremist and mocked as a lightweight actor. despite his two terms as governor of california, many remembered him playing second fiddle to a chimp in <u+201c>bedtime for bonzo.<u+201d> reagan himself used to quote his old boss, jack warner, who, upon hearing that reagan was running for governor of california, supposedly said, <u+201c>no, jimmy stewart for governor; ronald reagan for best friend.<u+201d> when people weren<u+2019>t jeering reagan<u+2019>s aptitude for political office, they were often scared to death. reagan<u+2019>s cold war rhetoric<u+2014>calling the soviet union an <u+201c>evil empire<u+201d> and the <u+201c>focus of evil in the modern world<u+201d><u+2014>sent shivers through those who had thought that detente had obviated such moralizing. amid his record arms buildup, reagan elevated the alarm level by joking into a live microphone in 1984 that russia had been outlawed and announcing, <u+201c>we begin bombing in five minutes.<u+201d> his strategic defense initiative encouraged the mockers and the terrified to make common cause in lampooning the space-based missile-defense program as <u+201c>star wars.<u+201d> but by the end of his presidency, reagan was actually being criticized for being too friendly with moscow. he nearly negotiated away america<u+2019>s nuclear arsenal at the 1986 reykjavik summit with soviet leader mikhail gorbachev, and he commenced a build-down of forces that left the pentagon gasping for air. many of his critics no less than his supporters came to rank his presidency as the most consequential since franklin roosevelt <u+2019>s. all this hardly suggests that donald trump is the next jefferson, tr or reagan<u+2014>or even the next chester arthur. but it should remind us that the republic has weathered presidents of whom large numbers of americans expected the worst. mr. trump might be different; he often speaks of himself as unique. but in this regard, he<u+2019>s probably not. <u+2014>dr. brands is the jack s. blanton sr. chair in history at the university of texas at austin. his latest book, <u+201c>the general vs. the president: macarthur and truman at the brink of nuclear war,<u+201d> will be published oct. 11 by doubleday.
donald trump isn<u+2019>t the first would-be president to spur predictions of doom - wsj
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