Ranking presidents, it must be said, is a mug’s game. The practice reduces the presidency to simplistic and outdated notions of “leadership” and “character.” As a result, key moments in history are downplayed, if not ignored altogether. Van Buren served during a transitional period in US politics, when a more militant and defensive South emerged to dominate politics for a quarter century. Devoid of Jackson’s charisma and popularity, Van Buren was flummoxed by this turn of events, and his bumbling balancing act satisfied few. His presidency, therefore, reminds us of the perils of surrendering principles to a party’s worst elements.
Because Van Buren was an unsuccessful president, his more significant contributions to the nation’s political life have also been obscured. His greatest legacy remains his role in building the nation’s party system (however destructive and dubious partisanship may seem today). Rejecting the Founders’ call for public officials to be “disinterested” (a favorite word of theirs), Van Buren saw parties as a positive good, a mechanism for resolving sectional disputes, keeping citizens engaged, and holding politicians accountable. Most important, a vibrant party system checked the forces of wealth and privilege seeking to manipulate government for private gain. In his unshakable view, strong parties led to sound government—and upheld the all-important principle of majority rule. His advocacy of a permanent party system led to the founding of the Democratic Party, the one still in existence today, albeit in a dramatically different form.
As Van Buren learned during his presidency and its aftermath, however, parties can serve sinister forces as well. In his time the Democratic Party became a vehicle for the expansion of slavery, the deracination of Native peoples, and imperial conquest of the West, better known as Manifest Destiny. Van Buren did not have the mettle to stand up to these forces when he was president. He found his voice in 1848, when he ran for president with the antislavery Free Soil Party, but the slaveocracy could not be stopped. Bitter and unhappy, he died in 1862, with the future of his nation very much in doubt.
The US has endured, though, and so has his party. Meanwhile, Americans are still quarreling over executive power, states’ rights, immigration, war, and economic inequality—issues dominating Van Buren’s time in politics as well. The history of our current discord is long and deep.