Christopher Columbus
Columbus is considered an essential element to the American pageant not because he was necessarily the first European to step foot in North America, but because he was the first to make several voyages and bring back news that shocked the Europe: there was an entirely new world as yet unknown with endless opportunities for resources and wealth.
Thomas Jefferson
The pageantry of American is exemplified not through Jefferson as writer of the Declaration of Independence—which was mostly culled from other sources, including Paine—but for the second revolution of 1800. Jefferson cleared away the authoritarian excess of John Adams and the Federalists, doubled the size of the country with the Louisiana Purchase and generally credited with making the government for work more for the interest of the common man than the elite.
Andrew Jackson
Jacksonian democracy replaced the existing Jeffersonian democracy in ways that changed things forever and not necessarily for the good. It was Pres. Jackson who introduced the idea of a revolving bureaucracy that rewarded political cronies in what came to be known as the “spoils system.” The result of the Jacksonian revolution has been an uninterrupted line of corruption and incompetence in high places.
Woodrow Wilson
The election of Woodrow Wilson introduced a new phase of progressive politics which tried to clear away the worst elements of Jacksonian democracy, fostered a new anti-imperialist foreign police and sought radical economic change. Under Wilson, the Federal Reserve was established, monopolies were divested, tariffs were broadly reduced and the income tax was introduced.
Ronald Reagan
In the wake of the shift to the left during the countercultural revolution of the 1960’s and the erosion of faith and trust in the government as a result of Vietnam and Watergate, the election of Reagan in 1980 on a platform of a return to traditional values signaled a shift back toward conservatism, erosion of social programs implemented after World War II and the origin of ultra-partisan politics which has persistently become more extreme ever since and transformed Congress into an almost perpetual state of gridlock.
