President of the Day

It was the name given to President Andrew Jackson's unofficial group of advisers, who reportedly met with him in the White House kitchen. The group included the then secretary of state Martin Van Buren (1782-1862), who went on to become vice president (during Jackson's second term) and president from 1837 to 1841; F. P. Blair (1791-1876), editor of the Washington Post, who was active in American politics and later helped get Abraham Lincoln elected to office (1860); and Amos Kendall (1789-1869), a journalist who was also a speech writer for Jackson and went on to become U.S. postmaster general. The Kitchen Cabinet was influential in formulating policy during Jackson's first term (1829-33), many believe because the president's real cabinet, which he convened infrequently, had proved ineffective. But Jackson, the seventh president of the United States, drew harsh criticism for relying on his cronies in this way. When he reorganized the cabinet in 1831, the Kitchen Cabinet disbanded.

From The Handy History Answer Book by Rebecca Ferguson, (c) 2005 Visible Ink Press(R) More than a thousand questions explore a cast of thousands, including Socrates, an early advocate of the question-and-answer format.