History of the United States I / Unit 10 USH1 1383 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Clay's Miscalculation
The idea
In the eighteen thirty-two re-election campaign, Clay and congressional opponents pushed re-chartering the Bank early. The charter did not expire until eighteen thirty-six, so there was no need to act. They forced the issue deliberately, expecting that Jackson would veto and that the veto would destroy him with commercial voters. Jackson used his executive authority to veto the measure, and then took nearly fifty-three percent of the popular vote against Clay.
In practice
A trap laid by the opposition that elected the man it was set for.
Where people slip
An entry presenting the early re-charter as an accident of timing gets the politics exactly backwards. Clay chose the ground and lost on it, because he had misjudged how a veto would read to ordinary voters. Jackson turned the veto into a campaign about whether a chartered monopoly should outrank an elected president, and that is the argument he won.
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