I can understand how one could make the case for the veto to be designated as an example of federal power expansion through the executive. Certainly the legislature in the U.S. was seen in the Whig interpretation as a barrier to tyrannical authority in one person.
However, in Jackson’s case, the Maysville Road veto for example, was used to thwart big government, at least to Jackson and other decentralists. In the Cherokee case, I think most folks, especially in today’s society, believe the Supreme Court to be the ultimate moral authority. This of course is wrong. I cannot defend Jackson’s refusal to enforce the Worchester v. Georgia decision, except to say his inaction may have been guided in some way to avoid Georgia siding with the Nullifiers in South Carolina.
I would argue that allowing the Supreme Court to be the final say on any arguement is big goverment. There are checks and balances, and Presidents can, have, and should when necessary, ignore the Supreme Court’s decisions. As at least two cases can show, the Dred Scott case and Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court can be very immoral and wrong on occasion.
I don’t think his overiding the Supreme Court on the Cherokee case was an example of big government; however it was a black mark on his record.
He didn’t just try to outlaw bank notes, but all paper currency period. This would allow for almost no uniform currency, which I would deem very anti-big government.
The BUS wasn’t totally private, it was created by the government. I won’t argue the post office situation with you. He actually made it illegal to send abolitionist material through the mail.
Lastly, how do you pay off the national debt, and grow the budget at the same time?
I still don’t see the FDR comparison. I really can’t imagine Jackson using the federal government to create programs designed to create temporary jobs. I also can’t imagine him spending the country into a deficit to do so....when as president, he was fiscally the exact opposite of this. Jackson might have defined the power of executive in a way that frightened Whig minded individuals in the antebellum period, but he didn’t abuse his power, and he wasn’t a spend thrift.
FDR admired Jackson for the man’s style of presidency. If you want to see where our current government became a bloated, disfunctional, money eating machine....FDR is the beginning.
The "small change bill" (I've written about it: “Jacksonian Ideology, Currency Control, and `Central Banking': A Reappraisal,” The Historian, November 1988, pp. 78−102) was ONLY about small change notes, and I (and economic historian David Martin) explain the significance of that. Martin has a three- or four-article series on Jackson's big-government anti-money impulses. But NO ONE has ever challenged my discoveries of Jackson's national bank plan---and it was a "national bank," not a subtreasury as some apologists suggest. They NEVER cite the actual documents I found.
On Maysville, most historians I know agree that this was specifically done out of spite against Clay, and had nothing to do with his "small government" tendencies.
Paying off the debt? I dunno, but look at the data. It's irrefutable.
Most of all---and here, you have to examine more than one or two of his acts---Jackson was the child of Van Buren's system whose very CHARACTER was to grow government through giving out government jobs. (See my chapter in "Seven Events that Made America America"). Van Buren also politicized (and Jackson approved of his doing so) the newspapers and controlled them (hardly small government). And it's hard to argue that an institution that is 4/5s private is "public." No government official---not a SecTreas, not a President---EVER tried to tell the BUS what to do or whom to loan to. Even Jackson didn't---he just killed it.