Politics & Power Quote by Andrew Jackson

Jackson’s line is democratic philosophy sharpened into a weapon. “The people are the government” sounds like civics-class uplift, but in his mouth it’s also a power move: an insistence that legitimacy flows straight from mass politics, not from courts, bankers, or polished statesmen who claim special competence. The repetition is the tell. He doesn’t merely argue that the people authorize government; he collapses the distance entirely. Government is not a separate, chastened institution. It is the people, acting through “agents” who can be hired and fired at the ballot box.

That framing mattered in the Jacksonian moment: an expanding electorate of white men, the rise of party machines, and a presidency newly confident in claiming a direct mandate. The subtext is a warning to rival power centers. If sovereignty lives in “the people,” then the president can present himself as their mouthpiece and cast opponents as enemies of democracy rather than participants in it. This is the logic behind Jackson’s aggressive use of the veto and his suspicion of unelected authority, especially the national bank.

The darker edge is who gets counted as “the people.” Jackson’s populism was real, but bounded: Native nations facing removal and enslaved Black Americans were excluded from this sovereign “we.” So the sentence doubles as both an argument for democratic control and an alibi for majoritarian force. It works because it feels morally self-evident while quietly concentrating power in whoever can plausibly claim to speak for the majority.