--- title: Donald Trump, Andrew Jackson and American Populism description: See why some are comparing the President-elect to the seventh President of the U.S. canonical: https://time.com/4591408/time-poy-donald-trump-andrew-jackson-jon-meacham/ author: Jon Meacham article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-12-07T12:50:14.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:49:14.325Z article:section: History og:title: Our Populist Prologue og:description: Jon Meacham compares Donald Trump to President Andrew Jackson og:url: https://time.com/4591408/time-poy-donald-trump-andrew-jackson-jon-meacham/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt88225e394865f2fb/6988b1f9656a3f621dbce154/diptych-meachum-facebook.jpg?branch=production&width=1120&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1120 og:image:height: 630 og:image:alt: diptych-meachum-facebook og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Our Populist Prologue twitter:description: Jon Meacham compares Donald Trump to President Andrew Jackson twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt88225e394865f2fb/6988b1f9656a3f621dbce154/diptych-meachum-facebook.jpg?branch=production&width=1120&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 video:duration: 04:12 video:published: 2016-12-07 section: politics topics: Person of the Year, Donald Trump, 2016 election, political division, jobs and manufacturing, ISIS, stock market, wealth and populism, presidential transition genre: interview, news feature, profile tones: analytical, reflective, critical, measured emotions: pride (medium), apprehension (medium), confidence (medium), division (medium) sentiment: neutral audience: general news readers, political followers, business readers, TIME subscribers people: Donald Trump, Beyonce, Jay Z, Goose Bernstein organizations: TIME, ISIS, China, India content_suitability: politics [00:00-04:12]; war [01:04-01:17] transcript_source: publisher captions transcript_reviewed: not applicable ---  # Andrew Jackson’s Lessons for Donald Trump > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-sub-2026q3/newsletters?i=72fb5bfa-7d1a-40d0-ad55-9b2b7dfaca22&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) * TIME Subscriptions: [time.com/subscribe-agent](/c/time-sub-2026q3/subscribe?i=72fb5bfa-7d1a-40d0-ad55-9b2b7dfaca22&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) ## Video: TIME 2016 Person of the Year: Donald Trump [Watch (HLS stream): TIME 2016 Person of the Year: Donald Trump](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Q0tBuF3M.m3u8) (4:12)  _Published 2016-12-07. The 2016 Person of the Year is Donald Trump, the President of the divided states of America._ Description, summary, key points, chapters, key quotes, questions and transcript, where present, were produced automatically from the video or its captions and were not reviewed. ## Summary TIME explains its annual Person of the Year selection, which it describes as the individual with the most influence on events, for better or worse. The video argues Donald Trump had a major influence in 2016 and notes the country became more divided during the election. It includes excerpts of Trump's own statements about jobs, ISIS and the stock market, along with an interviewer's account of meeting him in his penthouse and a reflection on his use of wealth as an image. The video closes by stating that no one else had more influence that year. ## Key points - TIME says the Person of the Year is the individual who has had the most influence on events, for better or worse. (00:10) - The narrator states that some argue Donald Trump had no influence over the events of the year, and rejects that view. (00:21) - Trump says he won without Beyonce, Jay Z or Lin-Manuel Miranda, relying only on himself and ideas people wanted to hear. (00:28) - The video says the country came through the election more divided and publicly conspicuous than any election cycle most people can remember. (00:47) - Trump says he expects jobs to be brought back, fuel companies to stop leaving, and ISIS to be brought down to a much lower level. (01:04) - Trump asks to be judged from the time of the election rather than from January 20th, citing a stock market bounce. (01:17) - The interviewer describes Trump's penthouse as opulent, with marble, mirrors and gold, and Trump wearing a suit and diamond cuff links. (01:32) - The interviewer says Trump believed his wealth and flamboyant display of it was an asset rather than a liability. (02:19) - The interviewer says Trump often does not answer the question asked and is unabashed about changing the subject. (02:27) - The video says the Person of the Year is not always an honor, and that Trump's influence is challenged by many who disagree with him. (03:22) ## Chapters - [00:00 to 00:28] Explaining the Person of the Year selection. TIME introduces the award as recognizing the most influential figure and raises the question of Trump's influence in 2016. - [00:28 to 01:04] Trump on his influence and the divided country. Trump says he won on his own ideas, and the narrator describes an election that left the country more divided than usual. - [01:04 to 01:32] Trump's campaign promises and market claims. Trump lists expected outcomes on jobs, energy companies, ISIS and the stock market, asking to be judged from the election date. - [01:32 to 02:27] Interviewer on Trump's wealth and persona. The interviewer describes the penthouse setting and explains why Trump's wealth did not undermine his appeal as a populist figure. - [02:27 to 03:22] Trump's interview style and reflections on the office. The interviewer characterizes Trump's answering style, and Trump reflects on the humbling experience of his election and the country's power. - [03:22 to 04:12] Why Trump was chosen as Person of the Year. The narrator explains that the honor is not always positive, and argues no one else had more influence in 2016 despite opposition to Trump. ## Key quotes - [00:10] narrator: "the individual who has had the most influence on events" - [00:28] Donald Trump: "I didn't get Beyonce and Jay Z and Goose Bernstein to get crowds, I had just me." - [00:47] narrator: "more divided conspicuously publicly than at any time through any election cycle that most of us Can remember." - [01:04] Donald Trump: "We're gonna have a lot of jobs put back." - [02:19] interviewer: "his wealth and that flamboyant display of his wealth Was not a liability that it was actually an asset." - [03:22] narrator: "Normally, that's not the case." ## Questions this video answers - What does TIME's Person of the Year designation mean? [00:10] - Did Donald Trump have influence over the events of 2016? [00:21] - What does Trump say he plans to achieve regarding jobs, energy companies and ISIS? [01:04] - Why did Trump's display of wealth not hurt his appeal, according to the interviewer? [02:19] - How does Trump respond to interview questions? [02:27] - Could anyone else have had more influence than Trump in 2016? [03:52] ## Content suitability - politics [00:00-04:12]: The entire video concerns a sitting U.S. president and a highly polarized election. - war [01:04-01:17]: Brief reference to defeating ISIS, a militant group, as a campaign goal.  by [Jon Meacham](https://time.com/author/jon-meacham/)  ## Jon Meacham Dec 7, 2016 12:50 PM UTC  This combination photo shows President-elect Donald Trump and former U.S. President Andrew Jackson. This combination photo shows President-elect Donald Trump and former U.S. President Andrew Jackson. Damon Winter—The New York Times/Redux (L); Edward Anthony/Universal History Archive/UIG/Getty Images  by [Jon Meacham](https://time.com/author/jon-meacham/)  ## Jon Meacham Dec 7, 2016 12:50 PM UTC It was dusk on Monday, Sept. 3, 1827, when the party from South Carolina drew up at the Hermitage, Andrew Jackson’s plantation near Nashville. One of the travelers, a young woman named Julia Ann Conner, left a diary account of her surprise at finding that Jackson, whom she had expected to be a wild backwoodsman with a dictatorial bent that led his opponents to call him an American Bonaparte, was in fact nothing of the sort. He was, she recorded, a “venerable, dignified, fine-looking man, perfectly easy in manner.” The Hermitage was filled with history. A brace of pistols that the Marquis de Lafayette had given to George Washington were on the mantelpiece, a gift to Jackson from the Washington family. “They are preserved with almost sacred veneration,” as was a small pocket spyglass of the first President’s, Conner wrote. And most important, the visitor benefited from her host’s help during a game of chess. An “excellent player,” Jackson “frequently directed my moves—apparently much interested in the fate of the game … there were no traces of the ‘military chieftain’ as he is called!” This sketch of Jackson the tactician—a player of chess, a game that rewards careful thought and foresight—explains much about his character. He could at times seem reckless, but more often he played the games of politics and war with skill and patience. And Conner was surely right when she observed that Old Hickory was “much interested in the fate of the game”—he was always interested in the fate of the game, or of the battle, or of the vote. She had detected something deep and fundamental about Jackson in her days under his roof: he was more than a frontier politician or a mindless populist rabble rouser. His enemies—and much of posterity—never quite understood that the largest fact about Jackson was not a problem with his “passions” (or temper, in contemporary terms) but his ability, more often than not, to govern them and harness the energies that would have driven other political figures to ruin. With Donald Trump’s rise to power as America’s 45th President, those in search of an illuminating analogy have frequently cited the example of the seventh. Steve Bannon, now Trump’s senior White House strategist, has made this explicit, arguing that the Trump revolution is akin to Jackson’s populist insurgency in the 1820s and ’30s. There are, of course, surface similarities. Both movements gained popularity based on freeing the country from established, ossified interests with a promise to return the nation to greatness (in Trump’s formulation) or to Jeffersonian republican simplicity (in Jackson’s). Both startled the existing order (the Clintons and the mainstream media in Trump’s case; John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay in Jackson’s). And both had powerful personalities at the head of the ticket. There is, however, an essential difference, one that will tell us much about the coming years in U.S. life and politics. For all his bombast, Jackson was an experienced public figure—he had served as a judge, a Senator and a general—who understood his weaknesses and took care to compensate for them. He could thunder and storm; he was prone to fits of rage and temper. Yet he was self-aware, and with that came a kind of self-restraint. He was, as his visitor to the Hermitage noted, as at home with a chessboard as he was with charging blindly forward. We simply don’t yet know whether Trump possesses the kind of discipline that Jackson brought to the presidency. Jackson’s character and worldview reflected a genuine conviction in the ultimate wisdom of the people. He was no opportunist. He came to his populism not as a political device but as a result of his experience. Born at the lower end of white colonial society—he never knew his father, who died before he was born—Jackson had been orphaned during the Revolution yet rose through force of will and a good marriage to the slave-owning planter class. A self-made man, he saw his political mission in stark terms: to remove what he believed to be corrupting influences (the Second Bank of the United States, entrenched federal appointees, monied speculators) so that ordinary Americans—what he called “the planter, the farmer, the mechanic and the laborer”—could rise to prosperity. Jackson could be woefully wrong. He was an unapologetic defender of slavery and the main architect of Native American removal. (Even before he was President, his many Indian wars destroyed much of tribal culture in a headlong grab for land.) In each of these instances, he was largely a creature of his time and place. This is not to excuse his culpability in the twin American sins of slavery and removal. It is to say, though, that history requires us to judge the figures of the past not by our own moral standards but by those of the ages in which they lived and worked. Yet the Jackson example also offers us a way of assessing the moral climate and stakes of our own time. If generations past could get things so badly wrong, then we are forever vulnerable as well, and the moral utility of history may well lie in its capacity to remind ourselves that we are always at risk of falling short in the unending search to perfect the Union. That was true in the age of Jackson, and it is surely true in the age of Trump. For another lesson of Andrew Jackson is that we have only ourselves to blame—or to credit. “Great is the confidence which he has always reposed in the discernment and equity of the American people,” Senator Thomas Hart Benton said in summing up Jackson’s presidency. “I have been accustomed to see him for many years, and under many discouraging trials; but never saw him doubt, for an instant, the ultimate support of the people … He always said the people would stand by those who stand by them.” Such is the covenant of democracies—and the fate of that democracy lies both in the hands of the people and of the President. And now it is President Trump’s move. ## Transcript [00:04] MUSIC ] Every [00:10] year we choose the Person of the Year who is the [00:12] individual who has had the most influence on events [00:16] for better or worse. The Tod argue that [00:21] anyone had no influence that Donald Trump over the [00:24] events of this year. [ MUSIC ] I [00:28] didn't get Beyonce and Jay Z and Goose Bernstein to [00:32] get crowds, I had just me. And ideas that people [00:36] wanted to hear. But there is a profound argument [00:40] about whether his influence was for the better or for [00:43] the worse. And that really is the challenge that faces [00:47] the country came through this election season more [00:51] divided conspicuously publicly than at [00:56] any time through any election cycle that most of us Can [00:59] remember. [ MUSIC ] We're [01:04] gonna have a lot of jobs put back. I think we're gonna [01:07] have a lot of fuel companies leaving our country. I [01:10] believed we will be successful with defeating ISIS [01:14] or bringing them down to a level where it's almost the [01:17] same thing. And I hope I'm judged from the time of the [01:19] election as opposed to from January 20th because the [01:23] stock market has had a tremendous bounce and [01:26] people are seeing very good things for business in this [01:28] country. [ MUSIC ] [01:32] One of the things that was remarkable in going to see [01:34] him, to interview him, is to be in that Penthouse which [01:38] is the most austiontacious, imaginable [01:42] marble and mirrors, and gold. And see him in [01:46] the suit and the diamond cuff links. There is a kind of [01:49] distance that repressed him about, of how is it that the [01:53] billionaire is the tribune of the working man? He said, [01:56] he thought that it had to do With that he wasn't a [01:59] phony, that there have certainly been wealthy [02:01] politicians before. Doing some cases would bend over [02:04] backwards to make themselves appear like the [02:07] common man, or do anything that they could, eating [02:09] the corn dog at the Iowa State Fair, wearing a flannel [02:11] shirt in New Hampshire. I think he had a very strong [02:14] instinct that his wealth and that flamboyant display of [02:19] his wealth Was not a liability that it was actually an [02:23] asset. [ MUSIC ] Donal Trump is very comfortable [02:27] sitting down and answering questions, although he very [02:29] frequently does not remotely answer the question that [02:32] you asked. In one sense it feels very undisciplined and [02:35] in another sense maybe it's very disciplined in that He [02:38] knows what he will and will not talk about and is [02:41] unabashed in completely changing the subject. Do you [02:45] feel changed by your election, and how you do think, if [02:49] I play this tape back in four or eight years, the [02:53] office will have changed here? Well, it's a It's a very [02:58] humbling experience, I can tell you, as somebody that [03:01] loves this country, it's a very large [03:05] country, but it's also an even more powerful country [03:09] than the numbers, because, if you look at China, and [03:12] India, and you have others with more people, but, [03:15] when you look at what we do in this country, it's The [03:18] most incredible place on earth. [ MUSIC ] A lot of [03:22] people think that Person of the Year just because the [03:24] nature of the name is an honor. And certainly there [03:27] have been years where we have recognized people's [03:31] whose influence has been altogether, unassailably [03:34] worthy. Normally, that's not the case. I know there [03:39] are a lot of people who disagree with so much of what [03:42] Donald Trump said and are very apprehensive about [03:46] what his presidency means for them and for the [03:48] country. I think I would challenge them to suggest [03:52] that someone else this year had more influence than a [03:55] way greater Surprise than what he [04:00] did in 2016. 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