President Trump’s Oval Office trade-in of a portrait of President Jefferson for one of President Polk shows the 47th president to be a practitioner of not only the art of the deal, but also of the deal of the art. The exchange, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, appears to have been motivated more by enthusiasm for Polk than by any antipathy toward the wordsmith of the Declaration of Independence. 

Polk is no pisher. America’s 11th president was a disciple of President Jackson. He followed Old Hickory as an innovator of the populism to which Mr. Trump is heir. Polk defeated Henry Clay in the 1844 election. He pledged to serve only one term. He kept his word. It was an eventful term, though. He won the Mexican-American War. He annexed the Republic of Texas, and much else, including Oregon Territory and California.