http://www.newsweek.com/id/166828

BOOK EXCERPT: "AMERICAN LION: ANDREW JACKSON IN THE WHITE HOUSE"
By JON MEACHAM

WHOEVER WINS THE ELECTION WILL INHERIT A MODERN PRESIDENCY SHAPED BY ANDREW JACKSON
  
'ANDREW JACKSON, A KIND OF FORGOTTEN FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY'

 New York-"As Americans go to the polls this week, they will be adding a new chapter to the long story of the modern presidency-a story that in many ways began with a man who is at once familiar and remote: Andrew Jackson, a kind of forgotten father of his country," Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham writes in an adaptation of his upcoming book, "American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House" in the current issue.  Meacham argues that, to an extent that is little understood or acknowledged, the modern presidency that will be inherited by either Barack Obama or John McCain has its roots in the Jackson years.  Jackson, believing himself to be the only "direct representative" of the people, rewrote the script of American politics to give them a larger role in public life and in doing so, changed American democracy.  "Before Jackson, it was possible to think of America without putting the people at the center of politics; after him, such a thing was inconceivable," Meacham writes in the November 10 Newsweek issue (on newsstands Monday, November 3). 

"The new president will be assuming an office and leading a political culture largely created by Jackson. Running at the head of a national party, fighting for a mandate from the people to govern in particular ways on particular issues, depending on a circle of insiders and advisers to help guide the affairs of the country, mastering the popular media of the age in order to transmit a consistent message at a constant pace, using the veto as a political, not just a constitutional, weapon and facing difficult confirmation battles in a Washington that is at once politically and personally charged-all are features of the modern presidency that flowered during Jackson's tenure. He was also the first president to insist on the deference he thought due the chief executive as the only official elected by all the people-a distinction he believed made the White House, not Capitol Hill, the center of national power and national action," Meacham writes.

In a companion piece, Orlando Patterson, author of "The Ordeal of Integration" and professor of sociology at Harvard University, examines what a victory for Barack Obama would mean for the problem of race in America.  On the one hand, he argues, it would represent the completion of a process of mass democratic inclusion that began with Jackson, of greater and greater assimilation in American political life. But it would also underscore how little progress has been made in the private sphere, where as he points out, blacks and whites are more separate than they've been at any time since the late 1960s. 

"What Jackson the slaveholder left undone, this historic election cycle has finished, whatever the outcome on Tuesday," Patterson writes. "It's now clear that blacks and women are ready, able and poised to lead the nation."

# # # (Read essays at www.Newsweek.com)