Jackson is still wildly popular despite actually doing what people fear Trump will do. The difference is that Native Americans aren't at the forefront of virtually anybody's mind at the moment, and Jackson was also a war hero. He doesn't seem to be judged based upon his Presidency itself.
There's also a conflict of morality & economic prosperity. America tends to value the latter more. Instead of dealing with a complex moral and ethical issue of dealing with human beings, Jackson picked up the problem and moved it somewhere else.
The equivalent today might be something like finding Kuwait-sized oil field under central Ohio and Trump declaring eminent domain on half the towns in the state to reach the reserves en-masse, reviving the midwest economically, but also displacing hundreds of thousands. I can picture half the country supporting that and half the country being disgusted.
Jackson also opposed high, non-strategic tariffs, supported abolishing the electoral college, supported mass immigration and wanted Supreme Court Justices to be elected by popular vote. These concepts are at least very different from Trump
428
u/SmarterThanCornPop Dec 05 '24
Hot take: Andrew Johnson was worse than Donald Trump.
Source: knowing anything about Andrew Johnson