Each school year, by spring break, my history classes had completed their study of the Kennedy years, 1961-1963. We discussed the glamor, the space program, civil rights, his charisma and humor with the press, and most importantly, JFK’s intense struggle with Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev.

In a provocative challenge to America, Khrushchev had ordered the building of the Berlin Wall, and construction of nuclear missile sites in Cuba. This second and more dangerous challenge prompted the 1962 Missile Crisis.

We probed further into the delicate diplomacy that, after 13 days settled that perilous moment peacefully.

For years I closed the unit joking, “aren’t you glad Andrew Jackson wasn’t president?” That line always drew a good laugh.

But really high stakes foreign crises is no longer funny. Not in today’s political climate.

America’s seventh president was a mercurial character. He loved blindly and hated passionately. If convinced his honor had been besmirched, the man dueled—sometimes with pistols, sometimes with knives. It all depended upon his mood.

The provocation behind most of these confrontations touched upon Jackson’s wife, Rachel, who had a complicated past.

A murderer, the author of the Trail of Tears, a plantation and slave holder–Jackson was deadly dangerous.

No financial wizard, he went on to destroy the Second Bank of the United States, the central financial institution of the young country. Old Hickory then deposited the government’s money into pet banks, local private, unregulated concerns across the country. Mismanaged, these banks collapsed, propelling America into one the longest, deepest depressions in American history.

Jackson ignored the Court, and he used the military for his own political gain.

The power King Andrew exercised rivaled the Almighty’s.

So the joke regarding the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 resonated with high school juniors. JFK’s skillful restraint in that perilous moment would certainly have resolved differently in the hands of the hotheaded, autocratic, Andrew Jackson.

Again, the joke is no longer funny.

Now America is saddled with an impulsive autocrat whose hunger for authority tramples our time honored liberties. He is attacking our communities, and arresting neighbors for his political gain. Moreover, this petty Napoleon shows little understanding of America’s legal tradition–basic high school history,, or civics. Then there are the ill-advised tariffs playing hell with the economy. Like Andrew Jackson, this current “president” carries himself as another absolute monarch.

The pertinent question this tale raises is this; what could this current, petty president, with little impulse control do in the turmoil of a similar crisis?

Tonight, June 21, 2025 we now know. This cannot end well.

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir, “River of January,” and “River of January: Figure Eight.” Chumbley is also the author of three plays set in American history, and co-authored a screenplay based upon her books.

gailchumbley@gmail.com