Among the ideas firmly associated with the Jacksonian era is that which asserts a general decline in the intellectual qualities of the national political leadership. Most recently, this concept of the low intellectual and educational level of the Jacksonians has been promoted by Richard Hofstadter in his Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. “The first truly powerful and widespread impulse to anti-intellectualism in American politics was, in fact, given by the Jacksonian movement. Its distrust of expertise, its dislike for centralization, its desire to uproot the entrenched classes, and its doctrine that important functions were simple enough to be performed by anyone amounted to a repudiation not only of the system of government by gentlemen which the nation had inherited from the eighteenth century, but also of the special value of the educated classes in civic life.”