Jacksonians in white hats tap the populist zeitgeist

Visiting Berlin to hand over the mantle of international good citizenship to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, departing US President Barack Obama hoped his successor, Donald Trump, would not embrace a "realpolitik approach" to Russia. It was something of a shock to hear Obama, utter the word realpolitik, given its associations with a realist understanding of power and statecraft.

International lawyers and progressive university schools of international relations throughout the Anglosphere eschew its use, preferring a vocabulary of international norms and values that laud global justice and human rights. It is these values Merkel champions and the EU, which Obama considers, "one of the greatest achievements in the world", upholds.

Unfortunately, for the West's progressive elites long schooled in these verities, they are no longer shared by most American and European voters. The revolt of the masses that Brexit heralded and Trump's election confirmed has shaken faith in regional and international institutions progressively transforming the world in a more equal, just, diversity-aware, border-free and environmentally conscious way.

Trump's victory based on a rejection of such virtue signalling unleashed a reaction that demonstrated an elite contempt for the "illiterate peasants" who had apparently fallen for post-truth politics. The liberal inability to accept the democratically expressed will of the people fails to understand the US tradition that Trump articulated so effectively.

Central to Trump's triumph is his ability to channel what Walter Russell Mead has identified as the Jacksonian school of thought in US politics. In his seminal Special Providence, Mead outlined how four schools of thought, identified with American statesmen Woodrow Wilson, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, shaped US foreign policy, and changed the modern world.

Of these traditions the Jack­sonian is most decried abroad and denounced at home. It is also the most potent. It is an aspect of the US political psyche least represented in the media and professoriate, which deplore rather than comprehend it, hence the hysterical overreaction to Trumpism. What does this tradition involve and how will it affect US foreign and trade policy and its commitment to international institutions?

Jackson, the seventh US president (1829-37), like his near contemporary, Jefferson, understood the authority of the president derived from the will of the free people. A southern outsider, Jackson emphasised popular accountability and feared the unaccountable east coast banking and business olig­archs. In contrast with the internationalist Wilson­ian tradition that informed the thinking of Clinton and Obama Democrats, Jacksonians are patriotic, Republican and populist. Like Trump, they put "America first".

Jackson founded the Democratic Party, yet across time Jacksonianism shaped the Republican presidencies of Dwight D. Eisen­hower, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. By the latter half of the 20th century the tradition had assumed a republican character. It is ignored at peril, as it has a habit of throwing up transformational leaders that reflect its prejudices.

Jacksonianism is not so much an ideology or a political movement as the expression of the social and cultural values of a large sector of the US public, a community of political feeling that, in the right hands, can be wielded as an instrument of power. Mead contends this community remains the most important in US politics. It originated in the values of the 18th-century settler Scotch-Irish folk community, but the mentality spread to later migrant cultures and in the process created a unique American myth, based on robust individualism, honour and equality. Its code emphasises self-reliance, self-improvement, hard work, respect for family, equality of dignity and right among those who pull their weight, courage and a maverick disregard for risk and fiscal probity in business matters.

This political community, held together by a social compact founded on this American settler myth, defines itself against a hostile world. Jacksonians draw a Manichean distinction between their folk community and the dark outside world prone to anarchy and chaos. The New Hampshire state motto "Live free or die" captures a key feature of this myth, as do innumerable John Ford western movies. More recently, Clint Eastwood expressed the contempt Jacksonians feel for the "pussifed generation" that abandoned its core understandings.

Government is a necessary evil. Consequently Jacksonians are profoundly suspicious of big government and the Beltway culture that they suspect pervert American interests in favour of progressive abstractions and alien values. It is a community, partial, as American historian Richard Hofstadter observed in the 1960s, to the "paranoid style" in politics. Such angry minds require an outsider popular hero such as Old Hick­ory or The Donald to restore government to its proper function. From this perspective, problems of foreign or domestic policy may be complex, but Jacksonian solutions are often simple. Gordian knots are made to be cut. Government should reflect the will of the majority, promote the economic and political wellbeing of the folk community and not be hedged about with administrative safeguards.

In economic terms, policy should look after the folk community, not banks too big to fail. Originally a party formed from small farmers, Jacksonian Democrats are instinctively protectionist. They may be persuaded into trade agreements but they have to be assured they are in the interests of mainstream America not transnational conglomerates.

As Steve Bannon, the president-elect's chief strategist and senior counsellor, explains, Trump represents "a new Jackson­ian populism". The new movement, Bannon says, considers "everything related to jobs … I'm the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the world, it's the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything … We're just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks. It will … be greater than the Reagan revolution - conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement."

Globalism, by contrast has "gutted" the American working class while creating a wealthy Asian middle class. This perspective has evident geopolitical implications for Europe and East Asia. Nationalist at home, Jacksonianism is classically realist abroad and is the American school most clearly aligned with a European realpolitik tradition.

Jacksonians consider Wilson­ian moralism misguided and human nature corrupt. Interstate relations are Hobbesian. Jacksonians thus have little faith in international law, or international insti­tu­tions. Rather than abstract Wil­son­ian commitments to human rights or free trade, Jacksonians are pragmatists. Slow to focus on a particular foreign policy issue and slower still to make a long-term commitment, once committed it is hard to build a sentiment for change. Concerned with US honour and reputation, Jacksonians are not afraid to use military force to achieve American interests. War, once embarked upon, must be fought with all available force. As Jacksonian general Douglas MacArthur observed, there is no substitute for victory.

New national security adviser Mike Flynn and potential defence secretary and former US Marine Corps general James Mattis exemplify Jacksonian values. They will shape the US attitude to Russian irredentism and China's rise. In this they realistically perceive Vladimir Putin advancing Russian national interests rather than a communist Cold War ideology. As such there is no obvious conflict with US interests and they share a common need to stabilise the Middle East and destroy a common foe, the Islamic State. Meanwhile, the Trump administration will pragmatically evaluate China's rise and any trade deals made will have to serve US geopolitical interests.

The new Jacksonians are profoundly suspicious of elites, federal power, and domestic and foreign do-gooding. They don't need re-education or elite guidance, and assume darkness and power as part of the human condition.

As Bannon concludes: "Liberals and the media are blind to who we are and what we are doing. If we deliver we'll get 60 per cent of the white vote and 40 per cent of the black and Hispanic vote and we'll govern for 50 years." He may well be right.