James K. Polk

Robert W. Merry:  A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent
James K. Polk:  11th President (1845-1849); b. 1795; d. 1849

Polk is a first-rate president (I'll not attempt to hide my very high opinion of the man) and Merry’s account of his life is engaging and compelling. Merry doesn’t hide his opinion either.  He thinks that Polk's president was almost a complete success.  Polk set out a number of goals at the outset of his presidency—completion of the annexation of Texas, favorable resolution of the Oregon border dispute, acquisition of California and New Mexico, reduction of tariffs, and the creation of an independent treasury system.  He accomplished all of these goals and left the office as a complete success.

Polk:  Gave us "from sea to shining sea."

I really like Polk, and I have since learning about him in grade school.  I think it’s awesome that he turned the United States into a continental power.  We take it for granted that this was going to happen, but it didn’t have to.  There is a ton of empty space between the Mississippi River and California / Oregon.  And given transportation and communications in the 1840s, it was just as likely (perhaps more likely) that an independent English-speaking nation would arise on the West Coast.

A Sudden Star:  Polk is the first U.S. President to suddenly rise to national prominence by becoming the president, and then achieving national success (this isn't Truman territory, but imagine if Clinton had entered office and rammed through his ambitious agenda).  Let’s not overstate things.  Polk had legitimate success as a Jacksonian congressman from Tennessee.  And he had a very quick rise once elected, become whip and Speaker of the House at a very young age.  But then he went back to Tennessee and served rather unsuccessfully as a one-term governor (he lost his re-election bid in 1841).  For most folks this would have represented an ending, but in the party-driven politics of the 1830s and 40s, Polk was able to win the ticket in 1844 as a result of fractures in the Democratic Party.  But unlike a lot of other compromise candidates (I’m looking at you Franklin Pierce), Polk’s presidency was a wild success.

Workaholic:  Each president brings a different temperament and working style to the office--and it doesn't seem that one was is right.  But Polk appears to have killed himself being president.  And I mean this in a literal sense—his death a few weeks after leaving office is I think rightly seen as partially caused by exhaustion.  When Polk set his goals he worked, and worked, and worked to pass legislation, establish diplomatic protocol, and plan a war.   And he constantly worried about all of it.  His effort appears to have paid off.  The sweat he put into each of his project appears to have greased the skids at the capital, in diplomatic circles, and to a lesser extent in Texas.  

(It’s a damn shame that his Secretary of State didn’t adopt the same can-do attitude in 1860.)

I think in large part because of this, Polk’s presidency seems very modern.  He had clearly defined policy goals.  He made major decisions based on his best judgment.  He refused to be bullied by Congress, and he enlisted others to help bend Congress to his will.  He was strongly partisan and believed in his party, but his opinions were his own.  Polk was also a rather colorless historic personality—nothing like Jackson or even Van Buren—which sounds like so many modern politicians.

Impotence:  It’s interesting that three of our early presidents—Washington, Jackson, and Polk—all appear to have been unable to father a child.  These are also three of the presidents who had truly emotional attachments to their country.  I don’t want to practice pop-psychology, but here’s my pop-psychology:  one could say that they were making up for something by putting their fatherly energy elsewhere.  

Vegas; LA; San Francisco; Grand Canyon; Seattle and Portland--Thanks Polk

You Can’t Make This Stuff Up:  Polk’s presidency is filled with truly dramatic and exciting moments.  The most colorful of these is Polk authorizing former Mexican president Santa Anna to re-enter the country so that he could negotiate an armistice--he of course took up arms against the U.S. after he passed through American lines.  We also have a friendly senator failing to notice the time and letting a Senate session expire before a vote could have been had on a treaty that would likely have ended the war much earlier--but he spoke to long, the Senate went into recess, and the war continued.  And the characters in the war itself, including John Freemont who would bungle so much in the Civil War, Winfred Scott, and host of others, make this one of the more interesting conflicts in U.S. history.  Isn’t this why we become interested in history:  For the moments when one decision changes so much?