Andrew Jackson's warnings for Donald Trump

Upon taking office, President Trump dusted off a portrait of Andrew Jackson and hung it above his desk in the Oval Office. He chose better than he knew.

The most jaw-dropping furor of the early Trump administration - the Obama wiretapping allegation - was presaged in broad outline almost 200 years ago during Jackson's presidency, which was also rocked by an unnecessary controversy driven by Jackson's prickly sense of personal honor and volcanic temper.

Trump is Jacksonian not just in political sensibility but also in temperament, and that could ultimately determine the fate of his presidency.

His tweets claiming that President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower created a sense of crisis in his own government, sent his aides scrambling to find some justification for the charge and could yet have momentous consequences if, say, FBI Director James Comey quits or is ousted in the fallout.

This is a lot of work for a Saturday morning tweetstorm arising, as far as we can tell, from a fit of pique.

Still, it doesn't have anything on the Peggy Eaton affair at the outset of the Jackson administration. Eaton, married to Jackson's secretary of war, was beautiful, flirtatious, impetuous - and unpopular with the other women of Washington circles, who considered her of low character.

The attacks on Peggy reminded Jackson of the abuse directed at his late wife, Rachel, which he blamed for her death. He devoted himself entirely to Peggy's cause. In the ensuing contention, invitations to parties, gossip and petty snubs took on the highest political significance.

Imagine "The Real Housewives of DC" - except with the president of the United States intimately involved in every brawl. Secretary of State Martin Van Buren deftly worked the politics of the affair to become a favorite of Jackson and set himself up to get elected as his successor, while Vice President John Calhoun - whose wife, Floride, was a Peggy antagonist - fell from favor.

Jackson and Trump share certain qualities that invited their respective blowups.

There's the moodiness. Jackson biographer Jon Meacham describes him at one point in the midst of the Eaton affair as "grumpy and wounded, sensitive and wary of conspiracy." Surely, that captures Trump's mood when he tweeted the wiretapping allegations Saturday morning.

There's the oppositional mind-set. "Jackson believed," Meacham writes, "the country was being controlled by a kind of congressional-financial-bureaucratic complex in which the needs and concerns of the unconnected were secondary to those who were on the inside." This is a fair approximation of the "deep state" Trump and his supporters believe - with some reason - is out to sabotage him.

There's the combativeness. Jackson viewed all conflict in military terms. Trump is ever the "counterpuncher."

There's the emphasis on loyalty. Jackson went so far as to exile his niece from the White House when she wouldn't warm up to Eaton (she was married to Jackson's secretary, who had to choose between her and Jackson). Trump aides must defend the indefensible when the president goes off half-cocked, knowing that their vigor in defense is considered a loyalty test.

There's the backdrop of hostile polite opinion. Jackson's critics considered him "unbalanced and dictatorial," as Meacham puts it. Sound familiar?

Finally, both Jackson and Trump viewed the early controversies a test of their legitimacy. Jackson saw the attacks on Eaton as a way to undermine his authority to pick his own Cabinet. Trump considers the Russia stories an attempt to undermine his November victory and kill his administration before it gets started.

Jackson eventually found his way out of the Eaton affair, not through internal warfare but by deftly negotiating a turnover of his Cabinet. Similarly, Trump won't punch his way out of the Russia story with wild allegations of his own. Assuming there's no fire beneath the smoke, he'd be well-advised to minimize the Russia story by focusing on matters of greater public import.

In the meantime, political observers will be agog. As John Quincy Adams noted when Jackson's Cabinet turned over at the end of the Eaton affair, "people stare - and laugh - and say, what next?"