Chapter IV: Jacksonian Democracy
The Jackson administration is remembered as a mix bag amongst the American people. If you walk around a Catholic neighborhood, you hear a fiery hatred of the man and immediate accusations of mass murder for the sake of US interests in the region. A definite example of a man betraying Christian values for the sake of anti-communist paranoia to Catholics who's been dubbed him the real killer of Saint Oscar Romero by Dorothy Day and the second coming of Judas by Alex Jones. You also hear from those in the pro-life movement of a man whose support for Roe v. Wade, neoconservative foreign policy, and arming of far-right death squads in El Salvador and Nicaragua directly led to millions of deaths, including millions of babies. On the other hand, if you talk to liberals, he's a hero to the working class for being the man who revitalized the New Deal in America and crippled the conservatism of Goldwater and Reagan once and for all. Furthermore, amongst war hawks he's an undisputed legend who principally opposed communism wherever he saw it, whether in the Middle East, the Mediterranean, or Latin America, whether standing with anti-communist parties or sending a vast array of weapons to anti-communist organizations. What is undebatable is that Jackson's legacy won't be truthfully examined anytime soon. So, it's up to Americans to make their own decision on his presidency which for a one termer is certainly complicated.
President Henry M. Jackson. Hero or thug?
Jackson’s inauguration speech was a full-throated attack on the economic crisis that America faced at that present time. With him proclaiming “there’ll be a fair society for all of God’s children.” When he got into the White House, he and Harris got to work on fixing the US economy. First, they passed the Hawking-Humphrey Act in February, a bill aimed at providing full employment to Americans. It was passed in the House overwhelmingly 270-165 and the senate 73-20. The bill itself called for a balanced budget, a balanced trade, and the government to restrict employment to 3%. This boosted the Jackson administration’s popularity amongst the poor and middle class despite conservative attacks on it being a pipe dream, a fact that was unfortunately true. The Hawking-Humphrey Act did little to curb the economic crisis faced by the US at the time as it didn’t have any binding policies in it.
Off the success of passing, it though Jackson worked to complete the greatest dream of the New Deal Democrats. One that every Democrat from Roosevelt to Johnson wished they could achieve. Universal Healthcare. To Democrats this was the magma opus of the New Deal. A program that was tested in Europe and considered a resounding success by every country who implemented it. Yet despite its clear benefits America hadn’t. Healthcare reform hadn’t even succeeded since Medicare and Medicaid were passed despite the best efforts of ironically the most hated president since Hoover, Richard M. Nixon. But Watergate got in his way, and he would be consumed by that scandal. Now it was Jackson’s turn to try. Him, Harris, and Ted Kennedy met in the White House to hash out the plan. They came up with three plans. The first one was the complete nationalization of healthcare, or as it was known as the “Radical Plan.” It was the least popular as conservatives and moderates would surely call it communism and attack it for expanding the government drastically. The second was the “Jackson Plan” which called for a system that simply set up a state ran healthcare system that would negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies like in Germany. This system didn’t nationalize healthcare but would certainly run private healthcare providers out of business and make the government ran healthcare system more advance and cheaper with no copays or deductibles via massive government spending. The third was the “Compromise Plan” which set up a public option rather than a universal healthcare system. This moderate plan gave millions of uninsured American's healthcare but allowed big pharma wiggle room to price gouge and cut out a decent chunk of the pie in the healthcare market and would make uninsured folks have more affordable healthcare.
Needless to say, Kennedy and Jackson quickly decided on the Jackson Plan as they believed it would have a better chance of passing. Conservative backlash was obvious from the start as they decried the plan as “socialistic” despite it being proposed by the notoriously anti-communist Jackson. Folks like Paul Laxalt and Jesse Helms compared it to the Soviet healthcare system for a quick and easy political point with conservatives and moderates. Supporters of the Jackson Plan quickly pointed out how countries like Sweden and the UK, who were notably far from communist or socialist had a similar system. Despite universal healthcare being less socialist than just a corner stone of healthy social democracies the attack stuck as conservative southern senators such as James Eastland, John C. Stennis, Fritz Hollings, and Walter D. Huddleston came out against the proposal.
Jackson wasn’t too happy but was reminded about the conservative opposition to the New Deal and refused to panic like Hubert Humphrey. Instead, he sat down with the senators who either publicly or secretly opposed the Jackson Plan to try and convince them of how it would actually benefit them politically. Of course, senators Eastland and Stennis were unworkable as their concerns over “lazy welfare abusers” (a dog whistle for blacks) was a nonstarter as Jackson supported the rights of African Americans. Hollings and Huddleston were easier to understand as they mainly were concerned with their political careers and had ideological objections to universal healthcare. Jackson promised that they’d be rewarded handsomely amongst the working class who would support the plan as they saved money on healthcare and had no fear of medical bankruptcy. Still Hollings was hesitant as Thurmond and the South Carolina Republicans came out strongly against the bill, calling it socialized medicine.
At the end of the day Jackson was far from the 60 necessary votes needed for universal healthcare despite his attempts. Vice President Harris took a different approach. He visited the office of any Democrat who opposed the Jackson Plan and had a little chat about it. A little chat about how they had government provided healthcare while their constituents were left out to dry during a recession and struggled to put food on the table while paying for healthcare. To Harris this wasn’t merely completing the ultimate goal of turning America into a full-fledged social democracy but a matter of life and death. People to him should have their basic human rights such as healthcare taken care of and not have to ration medicine or worry about the bill they paid for at the doctor's office.
Vice President Fred Harris, the father of American social democracy.
The chats where often tough as he debated for sometimes hours at a time with his fellow Democrats who failed to see the hypocrisy of taking government provided healthcare while the poor struggled financially whenever they got sick or broke a leg. Often times Harris went to bed angrier than when he woke up. In the House the Jackson Plan was introduced by Congressman Rick Nolan of Minnesota and in the senate by Ted Kennedy. The Nolan-Kennedy bill started to make its way through committee.
Meanwhile in Washington Paul Laxalt distinguished himself as the most popular and vocal critic besides Jesse Helms of the Nolan-Kennedy Bill. His attacks resonated more with moderates and conservatives for the sheer fact they weren’t focused on race baiting like Helms was. Laxalt gave a calm response to the healthcare debate by attacking universal healthcare as “putting an essential industry in the hands of corrupt, untrustworthy, government officials.” This easily resonated with voters as hatred of the government had grown in the aftermath of Watergate and Vietnam. If the people didn’t trust the government to be transparent or wage war, then why would they trust them to run healthcare? Conservatives rallied against the proposal of universal healthcare with the belief if the government put its hands on healthcare, it would be riddled with corruption, inefficiency, and unaccountable to the people. As winter turned into spring and spring into summer Jackson’s healthcare plan failed to get the 60 votes necessary to pass it in the senate. They had the votes in the House where Tip O'Neill managed to bully more than enough representatives into supporting the Nolan-Kennedy Bill. If it was voted on it would’ve passed 240-195 but Jackson wanted to save himself an embarrassing political defeat.
Negotiations were restarted by Jackson and moderate senators. The negotiations took place as the Supreme Court re-instituted the death penalty and Jackson announced the federal government would resume executions of federal prisoners. This gave him a small boost in the polls which gave him more leverage.
He’d get distracted however with his first major foreign policy crisis. In Iraq Ruhollah Khomeini lived in exile and was walking to his house when a car’s windows opened. Fifteen shots were fired, and Khomeini was pronounced dead at the scene and Persia was set alight. The murder of Khomeini had obviously been a hit job by the Shah, which was supported by Iraq and the US. Khomeini had long been viewed as a man who destabilized Persia and a threat to peace but things drastically backfired. Immediately Muslims gathered in mosques to pray for Khomeini’s soul and preachers gave fiery sermons calling for the end to the Shahdom. The first protests were started by the People Mujahideen and Islamist students in Tehran. The military was quickly sent in to crush the massive protests and this nearly ended the Persia. The violent repression caused Persians everywhere to riot against the Shah in a grassroots attempt to cast the Shahdom into the dustbin of history. For two weeks Persia was consumed by rioting and terrorism as the military failed to control the situation. At one point Jackson believed the Shah would’ve been overthrown and was seemingly proven right on September 11th, 1977.
Shah Mohommed Reza of Persia.
On September 11th, fifteen rogue members of the Persian army abandoned their posts and attacked the home of the Shah. For three hours the fifteen Islamists battled with the military in an attempt to kill the Shah. Fortunately for the Shah and his family this failed as his bodyguards managed to hold off the attack before two hundred soldiers arrived and pinned down the attackers. In the end all fifteen of the attackers were killed along with twenty soldiers, three maids, and seven bodyguards.
Soon after the Persian military, aided by advisors from the US Marines and CIA crushed the rioting in Tehran. The beating heart of the riots was ripped out and the rioting decreased. The 1977 Persian riots weren’t the last of Persia’s violence as Massoud Rajav and Ali Khameni went into hiding as they attempted to rebuild their respective movements. Rajav would be the most successful as the People Mujahedin had an increase in recruitment due to its anti-imperialist positions fitting well with the opposition, who saw the Shah as a US puppet.
Furthermore, the 70s would provide the conditions needed for discontent with liberal capitalism. Social democratic and liberal countries all over the world faced horrible economic conditions that allowed the rise of groups such as the People Mujahedin and various Islamic socialist movements in the Middle East, defined by their opposition to monarchy, the United States, imperialism, capitalism, and Israel. But more on that in the future.
The rioting in Persia, which killed around four hundred people according to international estimates caused the economy to take a small dip as worries of a violent revolution spooked the market. But the market recovered thankfully to the Jackson administration. Jackson’s greatest mistake though was nearing as he planned a visit to Panama in February 1978. Right now, though he put that on the back burner despite Omar Torrijos’s protests. Jackson wasn’t worried though as he believed that Torrijos wouldn’t be able to cause any problems. He was the dictator of a small country after all, and the US had the greatest military on earth.
President Jackson campaigning for universal healthcare in Louisiana
Before the trip to Panama Jackson desperately wanted to pass healthcare reform. He needed this big win for his administration before the midterms. The problem was he couldn’t get the moderates on board with the Nolan-Kennedy Bill due to the conservative campaign against government healthcare. Soon Jackson recognized only a compromise was going to pass anything much to his dislike. So, he approached Kennedy on compromising on healthcare with a public option. It took a lot of convincing, but Kennedy did come around, seeing how America was unfortunately not ready for universal healthcare. The bill would be called the American Health and Security Act (AHSA) and expanded Medicaid and Medicare while providing a public option. The House passed it overwhelmingly 253-182 even as conservatives such as Larry McDonald and Phil Crane blasted it as a step towards socialism. In the senate after a month of debate and an attempted filibuster by Bill Brock the bill came up for a vote. The sixty votes needed to pass the bill were guaranteed it was believed and the attempt to pass it succeeded. The AHSA was passed on January 20th, 1978 and signed into law that day. A resounding victory for Jackson who went on a victory lap. He proclaimed at the signing that “the New Deal has been completed” though in reality people weren’t too happy. The liberals wanted a full-fledged universal healthcare system while the conservatives were frothing at the mouths for such a brazen and large expansion of the government.
But to Jackson his happiness couldn’t be understated. Despite him having to compromise he still expanded healthcare to cover most Americans and passed something that would surely help the average worker. He had expanded the dream of the New Deal and for a little bit it looked like he was unstoppable. Jackson was two years away from re-election, but he felt like he already had it in the bag.
Now it was time to meet with Omar Torrijos whose calls had been ignored by Jackson for better part of a year. Jackson arrived in Panama City on February 8th to discuss the issue of the Panama Canal. Torrijos wanted the canal for Panama but was willing to wait a couple of years to get it. He came in with a compromise proposal of gradually giving Panama the canal over to Panama over a ten-year period. Jackson and Secretary of State flat out refused to give up the Panama Canal, believing it was too important to American interests. The meeting quickly and abruptly ended as Jackson and Torrijos believed there was no further room for discussion.
Jackson left happily, viewing Torrijos as a minor nuance that had been delt with. Now he could get to protecting the environment and expanding education access with Secretary of the Treasury Edmund Muskie. Until he was rushed from a meeting with Pennsylvania governor Milton Shapp. The TV was turned on and Jackson couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The Panama Canal had been attacked with explosives and smoke was now billowing out of the canal. Reports from Panama indicated numerous US soldiers were dead and had engaged in several skirmishes with Panamanian scouts. Panamanian soldiers blitzed US soldiers who managed to repel the attack but suffered heavy casualties and were only saved by well-timed airstrikes from the USAAF. Jackson angrily told the American people on national television about the situation and that the embassy had been evacuated. His speech ended with an angry denouncement of Torrijos and announcement of war between Panama and the United States. America only five years after Vietnam was back to war.
US soldiers during the invasion of Panama (1978)
Soldier near the Panama Canal shortly before being ambushed and killed (1979)
President Henry M. Jackson. Hero or thug?
Jackson’s inauguration speech was a full-throated attack on the economic crisis that America faced at that present time. With him proclaiming “there’ll be a fair society for all of God’s children.” When he got into the White House, he and Harris got to work on fixing the US economy. First, they passed the Hawking-Humphrey Act in February, a bill aimed at providing full employment to Americans. It was passed in the House overwhelmingly 270-165 and the senate 73-20. The bill itself called for a balanced budget, a balanced trade, and the government to restrict employment to 3%. This boosted the Jackson administration’s popularity amongst the poor and middle class despite conservative attacks on it being a pipe dream, a fact that was unfortunately true. The Hawking-Humphrey Act did little to curb the economic crisis faced by the US at the time as it didn’t have any binding policies in it.
Off the success of passing, it though Jackson worked to complete the greatest dream of the New Deal Democrats. One that every Democrat from Roosevelt to Johnson wished they could achieve. Universal Healthcare. To Democrats this was the magma opus of the New Deal. A program that was tested in Europe and considered a resounding success by every country who implemented it. Yet despite its clear benefits America hadn’t. Healthcare reform hadn’t even succeeded since Medicare and Medicaid were passed despite the best efforts of ironically the most hated president since Hoover, Richard M. Nixon. But Watergate got in his way, and he would be consumed by that scandal. Now it was Jackson’s turn to try. Him, Harris, and Ted Kennedy met in the White House to hash out the plan. They came up with three plans. The first one was the complete nationalization of healthcare, or as it was known as the “Radical Plan.” It was the least popular as conservatives and moderates would surely call it communism and attack it for expanding the government drastically. The second was the “Jackson Plan” which called for a system that simply set up a state ran healthcare system that would negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies like in Germany. This system didn’t nationalize healthcare but would certainly run private healthcare providers out of business and make the government ran healthcare system more advance and cheaper with no copays or deductibles via massive government spending. The third was the “Compromise Plan” which set up a public option rather than a universal healthcare system. This moderate plan gave millions of uninsured American's healthcare but allowed big pharma wiggle room to price gouge and cut out a decent chunk of the pie in the healthcare market and would make uninsured folks have more affordable healthcare.
Needless to say, Kennedy and Jackson quickly decided on the Jackson Plan as they believed it would have a better chance of passing. Conservative backlash was obvious from the start as they decried the plan as “socialistic” despite it being proposed by the notoriously anti-communist Jackson. Folks like Paul Laxalt and Jesse Helms compared it to the Soviet healthcare system for a quick and easy political point with conservatives and moderates. Supporters of the Jackson Plan quickly pointed out how countries like Sweden and the UK, who were notably far from communist or socialist had a similar system. Despite universal healthcare being less socialist than just a corner stone of healthy social democracies the attack stuck as conservative southern senators such as James Eastland, John C. Stennis, Fritz Hollings, and Walter D. Huddleston came out against the proposal.
Jackson wasn’t too happy but was reminded about the conservative opposition to the New Deal and refused to panic like Hubert Humphrey. Instead, he sat down with the senators who either publicly or secretly opposed the Jackson Plan to try and convince them of how it would actually benefit them politically. Of course, senators Eastland and Stennis were unworkable as their concerns over “lazy welfare abusers” (a dog whistle for blacks) was a nonstarter as Jackson supported the rights of African Americans. Hollings and Huddleston were easier to understand as they mainly were concerned with their political careers and had ideological objections to universal healthcare. Jackson promised that they’d be rewarded handsomely amongst the working class who would support the plan as they saved money on healthcare and had no fear of medical bankruptcy. Still Hollings was hesitant as Thurmond and the South Carolina Republicans came out strongly against the bill, calling it socialized medicine.
At the end of the day Jackson was far from the 60 necessary votes needed for universal healthcare despite his attempts. Vice President Harris took a different approach. He visited the office of any Democrat who opposed the Jackson Plan and had a little chat about it. A little chat about how they had government provided healthcare while their constituents were left out to dry during a recession and struggled to put food on the table while paying for healthcare. To Harris this wasn’t merely completing the ultimate goal of turning America into a full-fledged social democracy but a matter of life and death. People to him should have their basic human rights such as healthcare taken care of and not have to ration medicine or worry about the bill they paid for at the doctor's office.
Vice President Fred Harris, the father of American social democracy.
The chats where often tough as he debated for sometimes hours at a time with his fellow Democrats who failed to see the hypocrisy of taking government provided healthcare while the poor struggled financially whenever they got sick or broke a leg. Often times Harris went to bed angrier than when he woke up. In the House the Jackson Plan was introduced by Congressman Rick Nolan of Minnesota and in the senate by Ted Kennedy. The Nolan-Kennedy bill started to make its way through committee.
Meanwhile in Washington Paul Laxalt distinguished himself as the most popular and vocal critic besides Jesse Helms of the Nolan-Kennedy Bill. His attacks resonated more with moderates and conservatives for the sheer fact they weren’t focused on race baiting like Helms was. Laxalt gave a calm response to the healthcare debate by attacking universal healthcare as “putting an essential industry in the hands of corrupt, untrustworthy, government officials.” This easily resonated with voters as hatred of the government had grown in the aftermath of Watergate and Vietnam. If the people didn’t trust the government to be transparent or wage war, then why would they trust them to run healthcare? Conservatives rallied against the proposal of universal healthcare with the belief if the government put its hands on healthcare, it would be riddled with corruption, inefficiency, and unaccountable to the people. As winter turned into spring and spring into summer Jackson’s healthcare plan failed to get the 60 votes necessary to pass it in the senate. They had the votes in the House where Tip O'Neill managed to bully more than enough representatives into supporting the Nolan-Kennedy Bill. If it was voted on it would’ve passed 240-195 but Jackson wanted to save himself an embarrassing political defeat.
Negotiations were restarted by Jackson and moderate senators. The negotiations took place as the Supreme Court re-instituted the death penalty and Jackson announced the federal government would resume executions of federal prisoners. This gave him a small boost in the polls which gave him more leverage.
He’d get distracted however with his first major foreign policy crisis. In Iraq Ruhollah Khomeini lived in exile and was walking to his house when a car’s windows opened. Fifteen shots were fired, and Khomeini was pronounced dead at the scene and Persia was set alight. The murder of Khomeini had obviously been a hit job by the Shah, which was supported by Iraq and the US. Khomeini had long been viewed as a man who destabilized Persia and a threat to peace but things drastically backfired. Immediately Muslims gathered in mosques to pray for Khomeini’s soul and preachers gave fiery sermons calling for the end to the Shahdom. The first protests were started by the People Mujahideen and Islamist students in Tehran. The military was quickly sent in to crush the massive protests and this nearly ended the Persia. The violent repression caused Persians everywhere to riot against the Shah in a grassroots attempt to cast the Shahdom into the dustbin of history. For two weeks Persia was consumed by rioting and terrorism as the military failed to control the situation. At one point Jackson believed the Shah would’ve been overthrown and was seemingly proven right on September 11th, 1977.
Shah Mohommed Reza of Persia.
On September 11th, fifteen rogue members of the Persian army abandoned their posts and attacked the home of the Shah. For three hours the fifteen Islamists battled with the military in an attempt to kill the Shah. Fortunately for the Shah and his family this failed as his bodyguards managed to hold off the attack before two hundred soldiers arrived and pinned down the attackers. In the end all fifteen of the attackers were killed along with twenty soldiers, three maids, and seven bodyguards.
Soon after the Persian military, aided by advisors from the US Marines and CIA crushed the rioting in Tehran. The beating heart of the riots was ripped out and the rioting decreased. The 1977 Persian riots weren’t the last of Persia’s violence as Massoud Rajav and Ali Khameni went into hiding as they attempted to rebuild their respective movements. Rajav would be the most successful as the People Mujahedin had an increase in recruitment due to its anti-imperialist positions fitting well with the opposition, who saw the Shah as a US puppet.
Furthermore, the 70s would provide the conditions needed for discontent with liberal capitalism. Social democratic and liberal countries all over the world faced horrible economic conditions that allowed the rise of groups such as the People Mujahedin and various Islamic socialist movements in the Middle East, defined by their opposition to monarchy, the United States, imperialism, capitalism, and Israel. But more on that in the future.
The rioting in Persia, which killed around four hundred people according to international estimates caused the economy to take a small dip as worries of a violent revolution spooked the market. But the market recovered thankfully to the Jackson administration. Jackson’s greatest mistake though was nearing as he planned a visit to Panama in February 1978. Right now, though he put that on the back burner despite Omar Torrijos’s protests. Jackson wasn’t worried though as he believed that Torrijos wouldn’t be able to cause any problems. He was the dictator of a small country after all, and the US had the greatest military on earth.
President Jackson campaigning for universal healthcare in Louisiana
Before the trip to Panama Jackson desperately wanted to pass healthcare reform. He needed this big win for his administration before the midterms. The problem was he couldn’t get the moderates on board with the Nolan-Kennedy Bill due to the conservative campaign against government healthcare. Soon Jackson recognized only a compromise was going to pass anything much to his dislike. So, he approached Kennedy on compromising on healthcare with a public option. It took a lot of convincing, but Kennedy did come around, seeing how America was unfortunately not ready for universal healthcare. The bill would be called the American Health and Security Act (AHSA) and expanded Medicaid and Medicare while providing a public option. The House passed it overwhelmingly 253-182 even as conservatives such as Larry McDonald and Phil Crane blasted it as a step towards socialism. In the senate after a month of debate and an attempted filibuster by Bill Brock the bill came up for a vote. The sixty votes needed to pass the bill were guaranteed it was believed and the attempt to pass it succeeded. The AHSA was passed on January 20th, 1978 and signed into law that day. A resounding victory for Jackson who went on a victory lap. He proclaimed at the signing that “the New Deal has been completed” though in reality people weren’t too happy. The liberals wanted a full-fledged universal healthcare system while the conservatives were frothing at the mouths for such a brazen and large expansion of the government.
But to Jackson his happiness couldn’t be understated. Despite him having to compromise he still expanded healthcare to cover most Americans and passed something that would surely help the average worker. He had expanded the dream of the New Deal and for a little bit it looked like he was unstoppable. Jackson was two years away from re-election, but he felt like he already had it in the bag.
Now it was time to meet with Omar Torrijos whose calls had been ignored by Jackson for better part of a year. Jackson arrived in Panama City on February 8th to discuss the issue of the Panama Canal. Torrijos wanted the canal for Panama but was willing to wait a couple of years to get it. He came in with a compromise proposal of gradually giving Panama the canal over to Panama over a ten-year period. Jackson and Secretary of State flat out refused to give up the Panama Canal, believing it was too important to American interests. The meeting quickly and abruptly ended as Jackson and Torrijos believed there was no further room for discussion.
Jackson left happily, viewing Torrijos as a minor nuance that had been delt with. Now he could get to protecting the environment and expanding education access with Secretary of the Treasury Edmund Muskie. Until he was rushed from a meeting with Pennsylvania governor Milton Shapp. The TV was turned on and Jackson couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The Panama Canal had been attacked with explosives and smoke was now billowing out of the canal. Reports from Panama indicated numerous US soldiers were dead and had engaged in several skirmishes with Panamanian scouts. Panamanian soldiers blitzed US soldiers who managed to repel the attack but suffered heavy casualties and were only saved by well-timed airstrikes from the USAAF. Jackson angrily told the American people on national television about the situation and that the embassy had been evacuated. His speech ended with an angry denouncement of Torrijos and announcement of war between Panama and the United States. America only five years after Vietnam was back to war.
US soldiers during the invasion of Panama (1978)
Soldier near the Panama Canal shortly before being ambushed and killed (1979)
