The transaction between a potential president and the people is often as much about the heart as it is about the mind. “The large masses act in politics pretty much as they do in religion,” a Democratic senator said in the Jackson years. “Every doctrine is with them, more or less, a matter of faith; received, principally, on account of their trust in the apostle.” And they trusted Jackson. They might not always agree with him, they might cringe at his excesses and his shortcomings, but at bottom they believed he was a man of strength who would set a course and follow it, who would fight their
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