Andrew Jackson, the pugnacious, populist seventh president of the United States, lent his name to an equally ornery strain in U.S. foreign policy. According to Mead, the Jacksonian tradition is less a school of thought than a collection of folkways—an American subculture. Or as he puts it, it’s “an expression of the social, cultural and religious values of a large portion of the American public.” Jacksonian America is “a folk community with a strong sense of common values and common destiny; though periodically led by intellectually brilliant men—like Andrew Jackson himself—it is neither an ideology nor a self-conscious movement with a clear historical direction or political table of organization.”
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