‘Who Is James K. Polk?’ — An Old Question Asked Again The American president who never let executive details, political infighting, or public opinion distract him from his specific goals. by Walter Borneman
https://spectator.org/who-is-james-k-polk-an-old-question-asked-again/
Who is James K. Polk?” his opponents in the 1844 presidential election mockingly asked. Two centuries later, the question is asked again more quizzically. For one thing, James K. Polk proved a president can be both a big-picture visionary and an effective manager.
Elected as a Democrat from Tennessee, Polk has long been characterized as a dark horse. In fact, he was anything but. Before becoming president, Polk served 14 years in Congress — four as Speaker of the House. He had been governor of Tennessee, a hopeful for vice president in 1840, and the apparent choice to balance presumptive Democratic nominee Martin Van Buren of New York in 1844. When Van Buren failed to be nominated in a convention divided over the annexation of Texas, Polk rode a white horse out of the chaos.
Scholarly Polk was a stickler for detail all his life. As a young attorney in Nashville, he criticized an older Sam Houston for attempting to execute a judgment from a North Carolina court that was not properly authenticated. For his part, the much looser Houston is said to have observed that Polk was “a victim of the use of water as a beverage.”
Sober and somber, Polk carried his attention to detail throughout his political career, earning respect from friends and foes alike whether he was presiding over the House of Representatives or navigating the constituencies and issues of the cutthroat politics of 19th-century Tennessee.
“I intend to be myself, President of the United States,” Polk told a Tennessee confidante after his election, discounting rumors he would be Andrew Jackson’s or anyone else’s pawn. Then, Polk took the unprecedented step of insisting his cabinet appointees pledge not only to support the Democratic platform but also refrain from seeking the presidency themselves. If you run, Polk told them, you must resign.
James K. Polk never let executive details, political infighting, or public opinion distract him from the specific goals — his “four great measures” he called them — that he enumerated for his administration: the resolution of the decades-old joint occupation of the Oregon country with Great Britain; the acquisition of California and an expanse of the Southwest from Mexico; the reduction of the tariff that stifled the southern economy; and the creation of an independent treasury system immune from national bank wars.
While some questioned Polk’s foreign policy of going to war with Mexico to resolve the Texas border and acquire California and the Southwest, Polk maneuvered the British out of Oregon south of the 49th parallel without firing a shot. These two initiatives doubled the size of the country. His tariff compromise — essentially reducing the tariff to a revenue measure with only a hint of protectionism to satisfy northern industries — survived for a contentious antebellum decade. His re-organization of the treasury remained in effect until the present Federal Reserve System was created in 1913.
When Secretary of State James Buchanan grew uneasy over the prospect of wars on two fronts and procrastinated over a response to Great Britain during the Oregon debate, Polk used one of his twice-weekly cabinet meetings to command Buchanan into action. “The truth is,” the president confided to his diary, “Mr. Buchanan has from the beginning been, as I think, too timid and too fearful of war on the Oregon question, and has been most anxious to settle the question by yielding and making greater concessions than I am willing to make.”
Polk’s executive office was miniscule by later standards. When his only full-time secretary took an infrequent vacation, the president borrowed a clerk from the Navy Department. Polk fulfilled his duties diligently but never feared delegating and always demanded accountability in return. “I have made myself acquainted with the duties of the subordinate [Cabinet] officers,” Polk wrote late in his term, “and have probably given more attention to details than any of my predecessors.”
Barely three months after leaving the White House, having announced before his election that he would serve only one term, James K. Polk was dead, likely of cholera, at the age of 53. But by respecting the details of executive power and articulating clear and specific policy goals, Polk left a legacy that transformed both the executive power of the presidency and the geography of the American nation.
Walter R. Borneman is the author of Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America published by Penguin Random House.
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