Martin Van Buren: The best laid plans

Leadership lessons of the presidents

It's a stretch to say anyone deserves the presidency. Lots of people want it, and only one can have it at a time. The odds against any individual attaining the office are long.

But if anyone did deserve the presidency, it was Martin Van Buren. He had served his party faithfully in making it a vehicle for the desires of the ordinary people who elected Andrew Jackson. He stood by Jackson in Old Hickory’s numerous battles with rivals.

Van Buren pioneered the notion that the vice president might be a useful lieutenant to the president and then his successor. Vice presidents originally were presidents’ defeated rivals. Even after the adoption of the 12th Amendment, presidents preferred their secretaries of state as heirs apparent. But Van Buren persuaded Jackson to anoint him, and on account of Jackson's continuing popularity he won the Democratic nomination and the general election.

This was the last favor Jackson did for Van Buren. Soon it was swamped by the negative aspects of the Jacksonian legacy. Jackson's battle with Nicholas Biddle over the Bank of the United States had deranged the American financial system. Van Buren had scarcely taken his oath of office when banks in New York announced they could no longer meet their obligations. Panic spread across the city as one bank failure led to others. The crisis rippled outward to cities in adjacent states.

Jackson in retirement took a certain grim satisfaction in having his suspicion of banks and bankers proved correct. Van Buren had no such luxury. Despite the opposition of Jackson and other distrusters, banks had come to play a large role in America's emerging market economy. The self-sufficient yeoman of Thomas Jefferson's dreams had given way to the farmer-as-businessman, connected to consumers in distant states and countries by cords of finance. The cotton industry had gone farthest along this path of commercial interconnection, but other staple crops and commodities were not far behind. In fact it was a softening in the foreign market for cotton that triggered the first tremors in New York.

Not even Jackson, though, could have wished for a disaster as complete as the panic of 1837 produced. Nearly half the banks in the United States failed, leaving businesses and individuals in the lurch. Millions of Americans were without jobs. In those days of no social safety net, joblessness often led to homelessness and hopelessness. As Americans had done for generations, many headed west. But where previous waves of westering had been fueled by hope, this one was driven by despair.

The hard times lasted most of a decade. Not till the mid-1840s did the American economy resume its robust trajectory upward. And not for a few more years, following the discovery of gold in California in 1848, did the country finally shake the gloom of its first full-blown economic depression.

Van Buren was a casualty of the collapse. Until this moment, Americans had not thought to connect the performance of the economy with the behavior of their political leaders. Crops had failed before and businesses become insolvent. Yet such misfortunes seemed separate from politics. The seizing up of the export sector following Jefferson's embargo of 1807 hadn't prevented the election of James Madison, Jefferson's secretary of state, as president in 1808.

But the much deeper crisis of the late 1830s doomed Van Buren's hopes of reelection in 1840. Voters didn't have to choose between Van Buren and Jackson in assigning fault for the depression. They simply punished the Democratic party as a whole. They elected the Whig candidate, William Henry Harrison, primarily because he wasn't a Democrat.

There was nothing for Van Buren to do but die like a philosopher, politically speaking. He had been overwhelmed by events. He might have guessed that he was setting another precedent in being blamed and evicted for events over which he had little control. Indeed, nearly every subsequent panic or depression caused the rejection of the party that held the White House when the bad stuff began.

The lesson of Van Buren's presidency is that no leader dictates his or her own destiny. Prepare as you might, perform as you will. The circumstances that surround you can still bring you down. This might or might not make you a fatalist. But it certainly should make you a realist.

And it should keep you humble. If events could defeat Martin Van Buren, they can defeat you.