Negro
President by Garry Wills will teach you more about presidential politics than
any political science class are willing to teach. This book teaches how slave
votes were used during Thomas Jefferson’s day and how the votes of the descendants
of those slaves are used today. Not much has changed in this regard. Many
people have criticized Jefferson for writing all men are created equal while he
was holding slaves and got elected by slave holders. Jefferson was not a hypocrite
because he did not think that dark people were full people. I do not think that
there is evidence that Jefferson was brutal to his slaves. I do not think that
he was overly kind to them either. It seems as though slavery was an
institution that had to be managed like any other institution. Negro President
also taught me a few things about George Washington that I did not know. You
know what happens on the surface of presidential politics, but you may not know
what happens beneath the surface. Negro President by Garry Wills looks under
the hood and takes apart the engine that drives presidential politics.
