Would you believe that Thomas Jefferson was the Barack Obama of his day? Jefferson, although very popular with the people, was also relentlessly and maliciously excoriated and slandered by his political enemies, the Federalist Party. The Federalist Party was the party of the wealthy and merchant classes and worked to protect their interests, not unlike the Republican party of today. The Federalist Party came to Power with John Adams and used government to enrich themselves and their cronies. The Federalists believed that the country should be ruled by those who had the most to lose, which in those days meant the merchants and the aristocracy. It was during this time that congress passed the Alien and Sedition acts, which, among other things, made it illegal to criticize the Government. The bill had sweeping government powers similar to the Patriot Act of the Bush administration. Thomas Jefferson was elected to put an end to this abuse of authority and fiscal mismanagement. That’s when the floodgates of hate opened up on him. After Jefferson took office the Federalists relentlessly opposed everything Jefferson tried to do. In fact, for the eight years Jefferson was in office they supported only one decision, which was to threaten war with Great Britain over trade embargos. The support so startled Jefferson that he wrote, “ I began to wonder if I had made the right decision.” The Federalists made use of the newspapers they controlled. They also printed broadsides and political cartoons to so vilify the President that one Lady was shocked to find after meeting Jefferson that he was not the monster the Federalist press made him out to be; “ Is this the violent Democrat, the vulgar demagogue, the bold atheist and profligate man I have so often heard denounced by the Federalists?... can he be that daring leader of a faction, that disturber of the peace, that enemy of all rank and order? I felt that I had been the victim of prejudice, that I had been unjust… Not only was he great, but a truly good man!”
One biographer of Jefferson wrote,” He suffered open personal attacks which in severity and obscenity have rarely if ever been matched in presidential history in the United States.” Until now it seems.
The evil persona they created for him did not defeat him, as Jefferson’s eldest grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph noted: “ In speaking of the calumnies which his enemies had uttered against his public and private character with such unmitigated and untiring bitterness he said…they had not known him. They had created an imaginary being clothed with odious attributes, to whom they had given his name; and it was against this creature of their imaginations that they leveled their anathemas.” Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh anyone?
The malicious slander continued unabated for his entire Presidency and the level of hatred for him was as rabid as any teabagger of today against Barack Obama.
Historical note for the current crop of Oligarchs: Your methods work only for a season and then people wise up, although someone wrote that the great mystery of our democracy was why poor people would elect rich people and send them to congress where they pass laws that benefit rich people. As Lincoln said, “You can’t fool all the people all the time.”
So, be patient my fellow Americans, you Real Americans, the beauty of our Democracy, despite its great mystery, is that failed political philosophies, like that of the Republicans, will finally show themselves for what they are and go the way of the Federalist Party and the Dodo Bird.
