The Power of the Herd (35 page)

Over time, these infuriating little dramas wore Washington down, producing the desired effect: removal from office. There's good reason to believe that the two-term tradition he initiated by voluntarily stepping down after eight years had more to do with his disgust at how politicians and journalists were using their newfound freedom than with any plan concerning the optimal number of years future presidents should serve for the good of the country. According to Ellis,
“Washington described the Republican campaign against the Jay Treaty
as a blatantly partisan effort masquerading as a noble cause,” characterizing “the vicious personal attacks and willful misrepresentations that dominated the debate” as “ominous signs of a new kind of party politics for which he had no stomach.”

As Washington confessed in a letter to a colleague,
“These things, as you have supposed, fill my mind
with much concern, and with serious anxiety. Indeed, the trouble and perplexities which they occasion, added to the weight of years which have passed over me, have worn away my mind more than my body; and renders ease and retirement indisputably necessary to both during the short time I have to stay here.”

The Jay Treaty “exposed a major fault line
running through the entire revolutionary era,” Ellis concludes. “On the one hand stood those who wished America's revolutionary energies to be harnessed to the larger purposes of nation building; on the other side stood those who interpreted that very process as a betrayal of the Revolution itself.” The most fanatical proponents of both the pro-central-government and the anti-central-government arguments quickly fell prey to the classic Adam-and-Eve dilemma, each presenting his or her perspective as obviously good, then right, then righteous, while rejecting the opposing view as inherently evil, wrong, demented, or simply unintelligent. It was much easier to promote one side and demean the other than to respectfully negotiate the nuances of both: the latter task, after all, involved sophisticated emotional- and social-intelligence skills that eons of predatory, winner-take-all regimes had suppressed in both leaders and followers.

The founding fathers, contrary to popular belief, were not uniformly opposed to government and taxes. They were trying to invent a fair system that could support individual and group needs simultaneously. Yet due to pressure
from a newly freed yet profoundly traumatized public, two political parties began to form around a simplistic, amygdala-based debate: whether or not a democratized government would protect them or take advantage of them. Washington tried in vain to balance the two interrelated perspectives and was caught in the crossfire — struck, according to Ellis,
“in the spot he cared about most passionately
, his reputation as the ‘singular figure' who embodied the meaning of the American Revolution in its most elevated and transcendent form.”

Ever mindful of the freedom for which he sacrificed so much time, energy, personal safety, and money, he was also dedicated to forming a coherent, considerate, and empowered government, one that could stand up to the opportunistic European interests hovering relentlessly offshore. Washington confidently straddled that fast-widening chasm until he finally had to leap to one side or the other to serve what he saw as the most urgent priority: nation building. As commander of an unlikely army, the former general had experienced firsthand (most notably at Valley Forge) how debilitating a lack of centralized power and shared financial responsibility could be when coordinating large groups of people to achieve significant goals. Many soldiers were never paid for their service in the struggle for independence, as a postwar Congress remained ineffective in raising the monies necessary to make good on military commissions faithfully fulfilled by thousands of long-suffering men years earlier. America's first president ultimately realized, much to his horror, no doubt, that leading a group of untrained, underfunded men into battle was much easier than leading a country of autonomous individuals with opposing ideas, regional interests, short-term memories, and loyalties so capricious that some rebelled against paying taxes on principle, even to honor back salaries owed to the very soldiers who freed the population to begin with.

The Jay Treaty incident also revealed a disturbing by-product of freedom that wounded our first elected leader more deeply than musket and cannon fire ever did: the power of the unbridled press. It is both oddly comforting and incredibly disheartening to realize that the same smear tactics employed by modern politicians and reporters represent a time-tested American tradition. Comforting because it's clear that people are
not
becoming more violent, catty, or distrustful; they've been that way since the beginning. Disheartening because, even with more than two hundred years of democracy under our belts, the population as a whole hasn't learned a damn thing about working together respectfully and effectively.

And yet from a cathedral-thinking point of view, the dilemma is understandable. After thousands of years of servitude and victimization, the vast majority of people who emigrated to the United States not only were trauma
survivors with good reason to mistrust their leaders, they quite simply had no idea how to collectively manage their freedom. With few nonpredatory leadership models to follow and few or no emotional- and social-intelligence skills to pass down to their children, generations have been fumbling in the dark, reacting to the simplest challenges like a group of confused and angry teenagers.

Striking a balance between questioning our leaders and supporting them has never been easy. In a democratic society, we are simultaneously the bosses of, shareholders in, collaborators with, and followers of the officials we elect. Few of us, however, possess the EQ skills to excel at two or three of these jobs, let alone combine all four, because the responsibilities of
effective citizenship
have been grossly downplayed in an attempt to rein in leaders we still suspect will abuse their power like the kings and conquerors of eras past.

Politicians and pundits perpetuate our current state of arrested development. They may wear designer suits and mesmerize the public with complex legal jargon and sophisticated computer-generated graphics, but with respect to emotional and social intelligence, the vast majority of them have yet to grow up themselves. Adolescents, after all, exercise power by
dis
empowering others — obsessively rebelling against authority, establishing their own exclusive cliques, and finding creative ways to demean outsiders — and that's exactly what a vast number of vocal Americans have been doing since they sent King George packing in 1783.

As bosses go, American democracy operates more like a shortsighted, underhanded, bipolar dictator than an enlightened voice of collective wisdom. People don't need guns to grossly misuse power. U.S. history is filled with savage verbal and written assaults that brutalized our leaders, preventing them from tapping anywhere near their true potential in office. Perhaps more disturbing, these same undermining tactics took out innocent bystanders, even when the main target was strong and ornery enough to withstand the pressure. One of the most graphic examples involves yet another accomplished equestrian who became president: Andrew Jackson.

Arguably the roughest, toughest backwoods character to ever take office, Jackson was brave and talented in many areas, but seriously lacking in emotional-intelligence skills: easy to insult, quick to fight, and ruthless in defending a cause once committed. Unlike George Washington, who tempered his aggressive tendencies with empathy, restraint, and nonpredatory wisdom, Jackson took on the moniker “Old Lion” with pride. He could be ferocious, taking
tremendous risks and enduring considerable pain to win any challenge — at any cost. Lauded as a national hero for winning the Battle of New Orleans, the final action of the War of 1812, he was feared and revered for his furious temper, which he routinely used as a management tool. Jackson, therefore, was uniquely equipped to prevail in the election of 1828, which, even by modern standards, was the dirtiest campaign in history.

In part because Jackson was so contentious, supporters of his opponent, John Quincy Adams, pulled out all the stops, openly calling Jackson a murderer for his past involvement in a duel and his decision to execute six wartime deserters. In response, the Jackson contingent began spreading rumors that Adams, while serving as ambassador to Russia, had presented the czar with a despicable gift: a young American prostitute.

But it was Jackson's wife, Rachel, who ultimately paid the price, as her rocky first marriage to another man became a major political issue. The couple was publicly grilled over the murky details of when her previous husband had divorced her and when she began living with Jackson nearly forty years earlier. While Jackson insisted that he and Rachel believed she had been divorced when they were married in the early 1790s, official records were (and still are) sketchy. The campaign escalated with Adams's followers accusing Rachel of adultery and bigamy. Jackson was pegged as a murderer, an adulterer,
and
a home wrecker, but these accusations only inflamed his intensely competitive nature. Refusing to back down for a second, Jackson supporters intensified their allegations, openly calling Adams a pimp, insisting that his ability to procure women for sexual favors explained his success as a diplomat.

Jackson somehow won that election. Shortly before the inauguration, however, Rachel died of a heart attack, reportedly dreading four years of insults, jokes, and sneers in Washington society. At that moment, Jackson's savviest adversaries must have felt more fear than remorse or cruel satisfaction. There was that duel after all, and whether or not it could be considered murder, the fact remained that Jackson had shot a man for insults less severe than those the new president was now insisting had literally killed his wife.

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” So goes the old saying that Jackson either didn't believe or had actively set out to disprove twenty years earlier. In 1805, shortly before his fortieth birthday, he had defended his honor at gunpoint, mortally wounding a man who called him a coward. The incident involved a Thoroughbred breeder named Joseph Erwin, who had backed out of a horse race featuring Jackson's stallion Truxton. The event was eventually rescheduled — with Truxton winning and Jackson pocketing a significant sum. Even so, petty tirades exchanged in letters, and eventually
in the press, resulted in a duel between the future president and Erwin's son-in-law, Charles Dickinson, who was not only publicly deriding Jackson but privately demeaning Rachel. In alleged conversations impossible for historians to substantiate, Dickinson spread early rumors of adultery and bigamy that gathered force over time, apparently proving fatal to Jackson's sensitive and devoted wife twenty-three years later.

Now here's the astonishing part about that duel: Jackson
knew
his opponent was a better marksman. But the Lion of Tennessee was crafty, cantankerous, and truly, if somewhat misguidedly, courageous. He decided he'd have a better chance of winning the fight if he fired second, so he braced himself and let Dickinson take that frantic first shot, hoping that no matter where the bullet struck, he would be able to withstand the pain long enough to focus and execute a much more deadly aim. According to his biographer H. W. Brands, Jackson “had the supreme confidence of will — in his capacity to get off a shot even with a pistol round in his own body.” As he later boasted, “I should have hit [Dickinson], even if he had shot me through the brain.” That wasn't too much of an exaggeration, as it turns out. In
Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times,
Brands describes the details of this revealing altercation:

Dickinson raised his pistol and pulled the trigger
in a smooth, experienced motion. The crack of the discharge was lost in the surrounding trees as the smoke wafted away. Dickinson stared in amazement as Jackson stood his ground, apparently unhit. Jackson, his face as grim as death, raised his own pistol, looked implacably into Dickinson's eyes, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Jackson examined his pistol and saw that the hammer had been but half-cocked. He completed the cock, aimed again, and fired. The bullet penetrated Dickinson's abdomen below the ribs. Dickinson slumped over and fell to the ground.

Jackson
had
been hit. The bullet, missing his heart by little more than an inch,
“shattered itself against Jackson's breastbone
and rib cage, inflicting a painful and bloody but not life-threatening wound — assuming infection didn't set in.” He actually mounted his own horse and rode back to a nearby tavern as Dickinson was carried off to a friend's house where “he lingered for several hours” and “died with the dusk.”

That Jackson had the self-control to take a bullet, but not an insult, speaks volumes. I can't help but wonder what kind of leader he would have been if he
had developed the
emotional
heroism to match his larger-than-life personality, massive ego defenses, and sheer physical strength. (See Guiding Principle 11,
chapter 23
, for a procedure for exercising emotional heroism.) To this day, he's considered one of our more successful presidents because he was able to push through significant policy changes that influenced the country over the long term, despite the mean-spirited attacks that plagued American politics in the early 1800s. But since he always gave as well as he got, he was also incredibly destructive, an iron-willed, intimidating executive with little regard for public opinion, let alone informed opposing viewpoints. What's more, layers of unresolved personal grief, outrage, and resentment continued to fester under the surface of his already volatile temper, causing him to lash out unpredictably at people and causes he might otherwise have managed fairly. For this reason, Jackson's rise to power reveals important features of the
modern
American psyche, characteristics that fall into the “what got us here won't get us there” category of social evolution.