As we snore toward the primaries, PBS offers a pretty interesting show on our seventh president. Not an endorsement, by any stretch. Here’s the beginning of my review:
Dec. 31 (Bloomberg) — If you’re bored by the soporific slate of U.S. presidential candidates, consider watching PBS’s new documentary on Andrew Jackson. It proves that politicians don’t have to be dull.
“Andrew Jackson: Good, Evil and the Presidency,'’ which airs Wednesday on PBS at 9 p.m. New York time, tells how a man born in a log cabin and orphaned as a teenager grew up to be the seventh U.S. president.
Along the way, Jackson killed a man in a gambling-related duel, ran off with another man’ wife, led an unauthorized invasion of Spanish-ruled Florida, sent thousands of American Indians to their deaths on the “Trail of Tears'’ and accused John Quincy Adams of procuring a whore for a Russian czar.
In his spare time the slave-owning Jackson helped launch the Democratic Party and warned Americans of the rising power of bankers and corporations. Mike Huckabee, he wasn’t.
