Enjoyed it. Dealt with all the major decisions but also included some glimpses of the man and his life, which is what I look for in presidential biographies ( )

From a political has been to the first dark horse President candidate to the first President to preside over a war ending with the annexation of foreign territory, the last five years of James K. Polk’s life changed a lot about the United States. A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War, and the Conquest of the American Continent by Robert W. Merry reveals how America’s first dark horse President came to the White House and how he changed the office and the changed the nation through expansion to the Pacific.

Merry sets the stage to cover Polk’s presidency by setting up his election in 1844 with a history of the Jacksonian era to that point and place Polk and his main opponent Henry Clay occupied in it. After two electoral defeats, Polk’s attempt at a political comeback by being presumptive Democratic nominee Martin Van Buren’s running mate is upended with John Tyler’s decision to annex Texas that eventually resulted in the pro-annexation Polk to get the Presidential nomination instead of the anti-annexation Van Buren. His close victory over Clay appeared to call for Texas annexation and passed Congress just before his inauguration in March 1845. Merry then sets about explaining how Polk obtained his four goals for his promised single term (obtaining California, settling the Oregon dispute with Britain, lowering tariffs, and creating an independent treasury). The domestic priorities were covered in a few chapters, much of the book was on Polk’s negotiation Oregon and the situation with Mexico regarding Texas annexation, the border, and later the war. Polk’s administrative talents, working relationships with his cabinet (mostly Secretary of State James Buchanan), and relationships with members of Congress from both parties were detailed throughout the historical flow of events. Merry’s overview of Polk’s place in history amongst scholars and how he is viewed by the public is examined as an epilogue to a transformative single Presidential term.

Merry’s biographical work on James Polk is probably the best part of this historical examination of his presidency followed by his explanations of the internal fissures within the Democratic Party of the mid-to-late 1840s. His interpretation of Polk’s very hands on approach to day-to-day business in the White House on top of managing a foreign war culminating in his death soon after leaving office was well established. Also, his description of the Mexican’s internal political merry-go-round and factions leading up to and throughout the war was a welcome addition to the history. However, Merry’s analysis of the Whig Party and the slavery issue in this period are major issues of the book that should caution readers. The Whigs were portrayed as an elitist only view of America that only those it would benefit supported and that Henry Clay’s American System was soundly rejected, unfortunately the likes of Abraham Lincoln would disagree that the Whig platform was for elites and today’s debating of infrastructure improvements shows that in fact Clay’s American System still influences politics today. But Merry’s attempt to push the big blowup over slavery to being a result of the war with Mexico is problematic as Polk’s victory was the result of an anti-slavery party—the Liberty Party—costing Clay votes in New York and thus the election. It also paints over the fact that for over a decade John C. Calhoun had made every issue he could be about slavery to inflame fellow Southerners and that slavery itself was a banned topic in the House of Representatives because of the gag rule.

A Country of Vast Designs shows how during one single term the United States changed its trajectory both nationally and internationally. Robert W. Merry’s while providing a good biography of James K. Polk and the internal workings of his administration, but either misunderstands or completely misrepresents the opposition and the political role of slavery during this time thus giving a false impression to those not well versed in the era. ( )

James K. Polk outlined four goals for his administration just before taking office as the 11th president of the U.S. and accomplished all of them. So why doesn’t he get more respect?
This is the question that looms over Robert Merry’s account of this, the most effective of single-term presidencies. In an epilogue, entitled Legacy, he addresses it head-on and arrives at an answer not all readers will agree with.
Those four objectives were: reduce tariffs (previously used for protectionism, he aimed to limit their use to generating revenue, there being as yet no income tax to finance the work of the government); settle the long-vexing question of a national bank by establishing a federal treasury to hold deposits of government funds; end the dispute over Oregon, a large territory extending from the northern boundary of California to the southern boundary of Alaska, jointly claimed by the U.S. and Britain; and acquire California and the vast territory then called New Mexico from Mexico.
On the first two issues, the results showed he was right; trade increased and the currency stabilized. The settlement of the Oregon question seems so reasonable in retrospect that one wonders why it took so long to reach. It is the fourth question that continues to generate controversy and weigh on Polk’s reputation. Not so much whether California and the Southwest should be part of the U.S. — that seemed inevitable to many even at the time. The lingering uneasiness is in the way he went about it, provoking a war with Mexico ostensibly over Texas, which Mexico had already lost, as the easiest way of gaining the other territories he coveted yet consistently denied he was seeking to acquire. Not that one feels much sympathy with a Mexican government that fell into the war. It must be conceded as well that other nations, primarily Great Britain, had noticed the tenuous hold Mexico had on the long, underpopulated California coastline with its enviable harbors at San Francisco and San Diego. Polk was aware of this, and this added to his haste.
When Merry arrives at assessing Polk’s legacy, it is no surprise after reading his narrative that he comes down on the side of ends-justified means. Faced with a choice between its restless, expansive energy and its loudly proclaimed ideals of being a unique experiment in righteous government, the U.S. chose the former, without ever admitting, even to itself, that this meant rejecting the latter, except as lip service. Merry even cites “history” as an autonomous force as somehow justifying the way Polk achieved his aim (p. 476).
The reasons for Polk’s success lay not only in being on the right side of history, however defined, but also in his character. A personally unprepossessing man, he turned out to have unsuspected reservoirs of persistence, diligence and political guile to put at the service of his audacious vision. Merry consistently highlights these traits, as well as other, less attractive aspects of his character: “his suspicious sanctimony, his inability to establish a culture of teamwork, his tendency toward transparently sly maneuvers, his lack of personality traits used by true political leaders to bend others to their will” (p. 450). I found particularly unappealing his difficulty in seeing that anyone could have a legitimate reason for taking an opposing position to his. Of course, given the venality, vanity and naked ambition of many congressmen, senators, leading generals and even members of his own cabinet, perhaps he can be excused for this failing.
The cost of Polk’s single-minded devotion to his four aims was great on the personal level; he died three months after leaving office. The cost to the nation was tragic. His rapid acquisition of vast tracts of territory spelled the end of the Missouri Compromise, which for a quarter of a century had kept contrasting views of slavery from distracting the nation from other business. It now became the dominant issue, resulting twelve years later in the costliest, saddest war Americans ever engaged in.
One additional take-away from this book for me was the ponderous nature of both diplomacy and war-making in a time when it could take five weeks or more for instructions from Washington to reach their recipients, by which time events had usually changed circumstances (the instructions themselves were necessarily based on incomplete information that itself was at least five or six weeks old). No wonder that a president and his generals and envoys often swirled in a vortex of increasing mutual resentment and mistrust. The first few hundred miles of railroad track had been laid, the first few miles of telegraph cable strung, so this situation would soon change, but only relatively; there is still a huge fog factor dogging the decision-making process in times of crisis.
When Henry Adams looked back on the first century of American history, he remarked that he had chronicled in his multi-volume study the Jefferson and Madison administrations, while his friend John Hay had done the same for that of Abraham Lincoln. Adams wasn’t sure that the interval was worth the same expenditure of effort. I won’t venture to answer that, but it is definitely not so unimportant that it should be forgotten. Aside from my reservations over the author's overall endorsement of Polk's methods, Robert Merry, in crafting a well-written work of popular history, has rendered a great service. A very good read. ( )

Being pressed for time, I won't write a review. Rather, I recommend you see Goodreads reviewer James Thane January 13, 2012 review (copied below), which summarizes the book far better than I would be able to do.

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"While historians have generally ranked James K. Polk on the list of America's greatest presidents, he remains largely unknown and unappreciated by the vast majority of American citizens, dwarfed in reputation by Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, the two Roosevelts et al., who also populate the list. Robert W. Merry speculates that this is due in part to the fact that Polk lacked personal magnetism and was, even in his own day, largely unable "to pull large numbers of fond acolytes to his side....Unlike other successful presidents, he had no appreciable personal following to breathe life into his story and promote his standing in history."

Despite the fact that he is not better known these days, Polk had, by almost any standard, one of the most successful of American presidential administrations. A protege of Andrew Jackson, Polk entered office with several major objectives: to complete the annexation of Texas to the Union, to annex Oregon to the U.S. and to acquire from Mexico California and the vast Southwest between Texas and California. On the domestic side, he was determined to lower tariff rates and to re-establish the independent treasury system originally put in place by Martin Van Buren.

On taking office, Polk promised that he would limit himself to one term as president and by the end of that four years, he had achieved all of his stated objectives. The U.S. had grown in size by more than one-third and now stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific. More amazing, perhaps, is that he accomplished all of this against considerable opposition from the Whig minority and with a badly divided Democratic party that often frustrated the president even more than the Whigs.

In part, Polk established this record by working harder than any other president before or since. He devoted long hours to the job day in and day out and was absent from Washington D.C. for only a handful of days during his entire presidency. He once explained his rare devotion to duty by confiding to his diary, "No President who performs his duty faithfully and conscientiously can have any leisure. If he entrusts the details and smaller matters to subordinates constant errors will occur. I prefer to supervise the whole operations of the Government myself...and this makes my duties very great."

So great, in fact, that Polk wore himself out at the job and died only three months after leaving office at the (even then) relatively young age of fifty-three. Polk quickly proved also to be one of the most stubborn and determined presidents we have ever had. Once he set his mind on an objective, he worked relentlessly and often very skillfully to accomplish it. A prime example was his determination to win most of the Oregon country for the U.S. Merry describes how Polk effectively outmaneuvered the British to win a settlement of the Oregon controversy that was very advantageous to the U.S.

Polk's most controversial actions, both in his own time and down to the present day, were those he took in his determination to place the border between Texas and Mexico on the Rio Grande River, rather than on the Nueces, which was this historic border between Texas and the neighboring Mexican province, and to secure from Mexico California and the Southwest. Polk's opponents in the 1840s, including a young congressman named Abraham Lincoln, and others since have accused Polk of ginning up a war with Mexico to secure the territory when other means failed.

Merry defends Polk against the charge, although not all that convincingly, by arguing that Mexico was also at fault for the events that led to the war and by arguing further that, in effect, might makes right. Logic dictated that the United States and not Mexico would be the nation to dominate California and the Southwest, and that by his actions that led to the war, Polk was simply acknowledging and promoting the nation's destiny.

This is not an argument likely to mollify all of Polk's critics, but one need not agree with all of Merry's conclusions to note that he has written as full and complete an examination of the Polk administration as we are likely to get or to need. Whatever one may think of him, Polk accomplished a phenomenal record.

People will continue to debate that record for a good many years, and, of course, the acquisition of all of that new territory would open a bitter debate over the question of the expansion of slavery. That, in turn, would propel the United States into a cataclysmic civil war, as some of Polk's opponents feared at the time. In the end, perhaps the fairest and most lasting judgment on the Polk administration was rendered by the venerable diplomatic historian Thomas A. Bailey, who once wrote that, "one can fairly criticize Polk's methods, but one can hardly fail to be impressed by the results."
Above written by Goodreads reviewer James Thane, 1/13/12 ( )

Polk is the president admired by historians but ignored by the laity. This highly complimentary bio explains the first, and indirectly explains the latter -- our moral discomfort with expansion and aggressive war. We don't like how the sausage is made. ( )