Review: Walter R. Borneman, Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America, 2008

James K. Polk was one of America's best, most successful presidents. Walter Borneman has published an excellent, well-written and honest biography of this pivotal leader. Polk is given high marks by many historians for defining his agenda prior to his election for president, then carrying out that agenda as promised. He did so in one-term. As the election of 1848 loomed, there was much speculation on whether Polk would keep his promise of not running for reelection. He did. 

James K. Polk Eleventh President of the United States

His four years in the White House was severely detrimental to his health. He died, possibly of cholera, only a few months after leaving office on 15 June 1849. But, he knew his administration would have a long lasting positive impact on the country he loved. Polk's longtime supporter A.O.P. Nicholson wrote the epitaph for the deceased president: 

By his public policy he defined, established, and extended the boundaries of his country. He planted the laws of the American union on the shores of the Pacific. His influence and his counsels tended to organize the national treasury on the principles of the Constitution, and to apply the rule of freedom to navigation, trade, and industry. (p. 344)

Nicholson neatly summarizes the four policy initiatives that Polk carried out during his administration. These four polices were: annexation of a substantial portion of the Oregon Territory, acquisition of California, treasury reform, a tariff for mostly revenue purposes. 

Polk was a Jacksonian Democrat. His four policy goals were largely those of Andrew Jackson. Borneman does an admirable job narrating how Polk was able to advance the Jacksonian agenda to a greater extent than the Great Man himself. While explaining how Polk carried out his domestic agenda, the author focuses on the Mexican-American War and territorial expansion. He deftly recounts how Polk was able to acquire Oregon by extending the 49th parallel line to the Pacific. The British were demanding that the Columbia River should be the border between the USA and Canada. Polk knew how far to push John Bull and forced them to a reasonable compromise while avoiding war. 

At the Halls of Montezuma

When Polk entered the White House, Texas had already been annexed to the United States and would become a state in December 1845. Polk ordered troops to the Rio Grande on the Gulf Coast under General Zachary Taylor. Borneman does well by fairly describing Polk's contentious relations with his Whiggish generals. As he notes, the long delays in communications between Washington D.C. Texas and California added much confusion to an already tricky political situation. 

Borneman bases his work on Polk's presidential diary and other primary documents. His book can be appreciated for its lack of psychologizing of his subject. He sticks to the record while building a fascinating history of President Polk's political career and era. The author uses telling examples to illustrate Polk's intelligence and good judgment. A rare lapse of the latter is Polk's misguided loyalty to the incompetent political opportunist Gideon Pillow. A positive example of Polk's wisdom is his concern over Congress creating the Interior Department during his administration: 

Although Polk was preoccupied with the California debate, among other last minute bills presented to him was one to create the Department of the Interior. Polk was skeptical. He found the bill long and complicated and had little time to examine it in detail. He feared "its consolidating tendency" and thought that it would centralize power over public lands in the federal government to the detriment of the states, where he thought it belonged. (p. 334)

Of course, he should have followed his better judgment and vetoed the bill. Needless to say, the Interior Department is now a Deep State land grapping empire with contempt for the American people and their fundamental rights. It should be eliminated.

To his great credit, the author does not evade the elephant in the room in his book's conclusion. He forthrightly comments that Polk's work - and that of the American people who built the American southwest into a civilized country - is being rapidly, and intentionally, deconstructed. 

The irony, of course, is that in the early years of the twenty-first century, a tidal war of Hispanic immigration continues to sweep northward from Mexico, not only into the provinces that James K. Polk  wrested from Mexico one hundred sixty years ago, but throughout the United States. It is a tidal wave of population and culture as inexorable as that which rolled into Texas in the 1830s. Whatever else history is, it is not static. (p. 337)

And whatever Mexifornia becomes, it will be far worse that the Golden State it is replacing. It is understandable that the Mexican people and their government seek to undo the decision of 1846. However, it's treason for the American Deep State - among other putative "Americans" - to have the same agenda. History is indeed not static.