Ill Literacy: Books with Benson

Heartland’s Tim Benson is once again joined by friend of the podcast H.W. Brands, the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History at the University of Texas at Austin, to discuss his new book, Founding Partisans: Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Adams and the Brawling Birth of American Politics. They chat about how, while the Framers viewed political parties a fatal threat to republican virtues, parties emerged even before the ink on the Constitution was dry. They then discuss all things Federalist vs. Antifederalist/Republican, how contentious the political battles between them were, but yet how, despite all this, peaceful transfers of power continued.

Get the book here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/713058/founding-partisans-by-h-w-brands/

Show Notes:
Wall Street Journal: Adam Rowe – “‘Founding Partisans’ and ‘A Republic of Scoundrels’: Opportunists and Patriots”
https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/books/founding-partisans-and-a-republic-of-scoundrels-opportunists-and-patriots-b61dbf2f

Washington Post: C.W. Goodyear – “American political discord is as old as America itself”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2023/12/06/founding-partisans-political-book-review/

Creators & Guests

Host
Tim Benson
Ill Literacy, the newest podcast from The Heartland Institute, is helmed by Tim Benson, Senior Policy Analyst for Heartland’s Government Relations team. Benson brings on authors of new book releases on topics including politics, culture, and history on the Ill Literacy podcast. Every episode offers listeners the author’s unique analysis of their own book release. Discussions often shift into debate between authors and Benson when ideological differences arise, creating unique commentary that can’t be found anywhere else.

What is Ill Literacy: Books with Benson?

The Heartland Institute's podcast discussing notable new works with their authors. Hosted by Tim Benson.

Beastie Boys:

What's the time? It's time to get ill. What's the time? It's time to get ill. So what's the time?

Beastie Boys:

It's time to get ill. Show lost the time. Show lost the time.

Tim Benson:

Hello, everybody, and welcome to The Illiteracy Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Benson, a senior policy analyst at the Heartland Institute, a national free market think tank. For those of you who haven't tuned into the podcast before, basically, what we do here is I invite an author on to discuss a book of theirs that's been, newly published or recently published on something or somebody or some idea, you know, event that we think you guys would like to hear a conversation about. And then hopefully at the end of the podcast, you go ahead and, give the book a purchase yourself and give it a read. So if you like this podcast, please consider giving Illiteracy a 5 star review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to the show, and also by sharing with your friends as that's the best way to support programming like this.

Tim Benson:

And my guest today returning, for the 4th time is doctor h w Brands. And doctor Brands is the Jack s Blanton senior chair in history at the University of Texas at Austin. And as I said before, he has been a guest on this show previously, 3 other times to discuss, respectively, the Zealot and the Emancipator, John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom, our first civil war, patriots and loyalists in the American Revolution, and the last campaign, Sherman Geronimo and the war for America. And he is back once again to discuss founding partisans, Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Adams, and the Brawling Birth of American Politics, which was published last November by Doubleday. So, doctor Brands, thank you so so much for coming back on the podcast.

Tim Benson:

I do appreciate it.

H.W. Brands:

My pleasure. Good to be talking to you again, Tim.

Tim Benson:

Yeah. I just wanna let you know, you were one appearance away, from the 5 timers club, which would make you eligible for the much coveted, seafoam colored jacket. So, just wanna

H.W. Brands:

Okay.

Tim Benson:

Well, we'll see. I'll I'll have to see about the sweater.

H.W. Brands:

Coming out on the fall, Tim. Heading me up. I need that I need that jacket.

Tim Benson:

Everyone needs a seafoam colored, you know, blazer. That's just every it's it's it's a must for every hirsute male's wardrobe. Anyway, so to this book, you know, normal entry question of the podcast, you know, what made you wanna write this book? What was the genesis of it? I have to, I'd have to believe the kernel of it came from when you were, writing, the our first civil war book about the the patriots and oils in the American revolution.

Tim Benson:

I think, I know just offhand, I think that's

H.W. Brands:

Yeah. That's exactly it. And I at the time I wrote that book, I wasn't thinking in terms of the sequel, but that story ends happily for the patriots, for the ones who won the revolutionary war. It ends badly for their opponents, the loyalists. They lose, but not as badly as it might.

H.W. Brands:

Because one of the striking features of the American Revolution, it's one of the reasons that Americans can look on the American Revolution as sort of temperately as we do is there was no bloodbath at the end of the revolution, the way they often is in other revolutions. And it's not because Americans were nicer to their opponents. The winners weren't any nicer to their to the losers than was the case in other countries. But in this case, the losers, the loyalists, the ones who remained loyal to Britain, they had an exit strategy, literally. They had a place to go.

H.W. Brands:

They got on the British ships and they sailed away, and that's the end of my story in our first civil war. And it left the people who had been on the side promoting the war, promoting independence, with this, strange view of, what shall I say, political opinion or their new political universe. Because during the war, as long as the loyalists been around, they knew that politics leads to deep divisions and deadly divisions in the case of patriots against the loyalists. And that's why I call our 1st civil war the nastiest fighting in the American revolution to place between American and American rather than between American and Brit. So the war ends, but instead of this bloodbath, all the people on losing side, they they go away.

H.W. Brands:

And so the winners are left in complete control of the field, that is the field the the ground, but also of the political arena, and they get to have their way. And at that moment, in that moment of victory, they they realized, hey, we all agree here on these essential questions of politics. And they allowed themselves the delusion of thinking, and that would remain so. Because as I said, the people who disagreed with them, they're gone. Well, it didn't turn out to be so.

H.W. Brands:

But in that moment in that moment, and I I knew this story from having been over this ground before, and I teach all this stuff, that in the early days of the, well, founding of the republic and the writing of the constitution, Americans Americans believe, because they were creating this new government, a republic a republic is a system of government in which political power rises from the people, That virtuous people were essential to the continuing operation of the American system in a in a monarchy, in an empire, in a dictatorship. The people don't have to be virtuous at all. They're kept under the thumb of the ruler. But when the people are the rulers themselves, they better have the national interest at heart. They better be imbued with what was often called civic virtue, or this thing is gonna fall to pieces.

H.W. Brands:

The American founders were aware of republics earlier in history, the Greek republics in Athens, the city states, the Roman Republic, but they all knew that those republics had come to a bad end. And people, it turned out, simply could not govern themselves, at least over a long period of time. So the Americans, the ones who the winners of the revolutionary war, when they the war is over, they realize, okay, what's gonna hold this thing together? It's gonna have to be civic virtue. And they were utterly opposed to the idea of something that was a commonplace in Britain at the time.

H.W. Brands:

Indeed, had been a commonplace in American politics as long as the American colonies were part of the British Empire, and that was party politics. They knew about parties. They knew typically in Britain, there was a the party of the court and part the party of the country, and they would let later be called Whigs and Tories, and and there was something similar in each of the colonies. But again, because those people on the opposite side of the big debate during the revolutionary war were gone, they thought that's not gonna happen here. And they thought it better not happen here.

H.W. Brands:

Because if it does, all our hopes for this experiment self government are probably gonna be blown up. So my story, I pick up the story at that point and I tell the story of how, yes, indeed, their hopes were blown up within a remarkably short period of time. And so I wrote this book really thinking about the period of 17 80s 17 90s. That's my chronological period in the book. I was aware, of course, that partisanship, increasing partisanship had imbued American American politics since, say the 19 nineties.

H.W. Brands:

And the political parties have pulled farther apart and the the debates between the parties gotten uglier and you couldn't get anything done across party lines. So I was aware of that, but that wasn't foremost in my head. But as I wrote this book and as I saw the emergence of political parties back then, I thought, oh my god. What we're seeing today, we've seen it before. It's always been with us.

Tim Benson:

So that's

H.W. Brands:

how I came to write the book.

Tim Benson:

Yeah. Yeah. And you begin well, actually, first it leads off with, you really start with Alexander Hamilton, and this is during the war, sort of griping, in letters about his problems with the Continental Congress and its want of power. And then you talk about his continentalist essays, which, you know, where he basically makes the argument that a more centralized government, an energetic government, the terms they used back then, would not pose a danger to liberties. And there's, obviously serious concerns with the articles of Confederation once the war is over, which is our original sort of governing document.

Tim Benson:

And, there's this concern among the founders that after the conclusion of the war, that they're afraid that they're gonna muck this whole thing up, that, that division and squabbling between the individual states would make, the new country sort of the play thing for the European powers, open to intrigue, that, the European powers are gonna play off one state against the other and just, you know, cause dissension. And, they're they have this feeling that gluing this country together, you know, grafting it together out of these 13 individual states is going to be an extremely difficult task.

H.W. Brands:

I agree with you wholeheartedly up to a point. I would inject when you said the founders felt this way, I would say some of the founders felt that way. And this is important to keep in mind because having set the scene a moment ago that they're all in agreement on this big question, should we be independent? There was no disagreement ever about that. But as soon as that one's taken care of, then disagree then disagreement on other issues comes out.

H.W. Brands:

And the real question was, how firmly glued together do these United States have to be? And it's worth noting that the first time the United States of America was used was in the Declaration of Independence. And the emphasis there was on states, plural. And everybody under understood these states were plural. They formed this wartime alliance, the articles under the articles of Confederation.

H.W. Brands:

And it was called a confederation. It wasn't called it a union. It was a confederation. And it sufficed to win victory, to win independence from Britain. But beyond that, there was this fundamental split over, well, how coherent should this confederation be?

H.W. Brands:

Should political power be based primarily in the states? Or should it be rested in the national government? And as things existed under the article of Confederation, it rested with the states. So the states were sovereign nations one to the other. They did have these certain obligations that they committed to in the article confederation, but those weren't very demanding at all.

H.W. Brands:

And what the skeptics of the articles of Confederation said, well, this is never gonna suffice to hold us together. We are going to fall to bickering and fighting and perhaps even war among ourselves. And if we don't bring more among ourselves and the British, the British, and maybe the French and the Spanish, and those are the three principal European powers, they might try to pick us off 1 by 1. And so just as we had had to hold together during the war, we're gonna have to hold together during peace. But during the war, there's this natural incentive, everybody to hang together because we're all fighting.

H.W. Brands:

And as Benjamin Franklin said in signing the declaration of independence, he said we have to all hang together or we'll hang separately. Yes. Well, the British noose no longer loomed above them. But there was that concern. Now, there were other people who said, you're overblowing that concern entirely.

H.W. Brands:

Virginia can take care of itself. New York can take care of itself. The smaller the smaller states, Delaware, Rhode Island, maybe they'll form a a New England alliance or something like that. But come on. What are the British?

H.W. Brands:

What are the French really care? They're far far away. What we have to worry about, said the skeptics, was that we might end up replacing King George the 3rd with King George Washington the first of the United States of America, and we didn't fight a revolution to get that result.

Tim Benson:

Mhmm. Yeah. In many ways, fighting the revolution was the easy part.

H.W. Brands:

Oh. Oh, it's always the I mean, one of the striking things, it sounds very paradoxical, but war is the easy part of politics. Domestic life. Politics is this well, this particularly applies in republic in in political systems that let people vote. Sure.

H.W. Brands:

Because during wartime, you just naturally see greater power to the central government. The government does what it has to do. Because if it doesn't, the the whole system will fall apart and the country might be destroyed. But as soon as peace comes around, then, okay. Now once again, we're back to arguing.

H.W. Brands:

And the basic difference is in war, you can coerce people. You can legit legitimately coerce people. In peacetime, in a democracy, in a republic, you have to persuade them, and people are hard to persuade.

Tim Benson:

Mhmm. Okay. So the road to Philadelphia and the constitutional convention, how do we get there? Seems like it's primarily if not primarily is the right word, but, there's a strong push from, 2 of the main characters in the in this book, Alexander Hamilton and and James Madison, to really, you know, get the ball rolling here on on coming up with something to either amend or replace the articles.

H.W. Brands:

So you said, you know, how do we get to Philadelphia? You know, the old joke about how do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice. Practice. Practice.

Tim Benson:

Practice. Practice.

H.W. Brands:

How do you get to Philadelphia? Advocate, advocate, advocate. And what you have to do is you have to scare people. And in fact so the principal organizers of the constitutional convention, the the one the the real spearhead was James Madison. And Alexander Hamilton was less sort of diligent than Madison, but he was he was fully on board as well.

H.W. Brands:

And what they had to do was they had to basically pretend that they were going to recommend amendments to the article's confederation. They didn't intend to do this at all. They really intended to write a brand new government, start over again. Essentially, they were plotting the overthrow of the government of the United States. Now when we think about this, if somebody says they're plotting the overthrow of the government of the United States today, that's a big deal.

H.W. Brands:

There are laws sedition laws and things against it. But Sure.

H.W. Brands:

When

H.W. Brands:

I asked my students, I asked I was just talking to a group yesterday. I asked them, so is it as big a deal to overthrow a government that's only 5 years old as it is to overthrow a government that's 200 years old? And I don't know. But the what Madison and Hamilton decided was the articles of Confederation, the powers that gives the central government are entirely inadequate to the needs of the moment. But they also knew that they couldn't take this project on head on because they would scare the daylights out of the small states.

H.W. Brands:

The article articles of Confederation made Delaware and Rhode Island the equal of Virginia and New York. Virginia and New York are the 2 biggest most populated states. And for Madison, not coincidentally from Virginia, and Hamilton from New York, This was ludicrous. Politics has to reflect reality, they said. And it's utterly unreal to think that Delaware is the equivalent of Virginia and Rhode Island of New York.

H.W. Brands:

So we're gonna have to make that change. We're also gonna have to give the central government more authority. The articles of Confederation said, firstly, it sort of gave an equal vote to every state, and it also required that any important legislation passed with a super majority. And so it often had to have not just a majority, not 7 out of 13, but 9 or 10 out of 13. As a result, it could could get almost nothing done.

H.W. Brands:

It also could not act act on people themselves. If it wanted to impose taxes, it could requisition, it could request that the states pay up taxes, but they couldn't couldn't enforce the states to do it. And so each state thought that it was being asked to pay too much. So it really was a mess if you thought that the government needed to act together. And so they said, well, we gotta we gotta we gotta change this.

H.W. Brands:

But we can't say we're gonna overthrow it. Because first of all, the striking thing about these two guys is how young they are. When all this discussion begins, Hamilton's 25 years old, and Madison's 30 years old. So my students Amazing. I put these questions to my students.

H.W. Brands:

My students are a little bit young.

Tim Benson:

Babies.

H.W. Brands:

And I say, hey, anybody after overthrowing the government of the United States? And they're, you know, they're pretty sure I'm not serious. But I said that this is what these 2 guys set out to do. So what they did is they said, we're gonna have a convention in Annapolis in Annapolis, Maryland in September of 18 17/86. And we're gonna invite everybody who thinks that the government the central government needs to have greater control over trade.

H.W. Brands:

Trade was a big issue that a lot of the states could get on board with. Because there were tariff wars between New Jersey and New York. They were disrupting previous and long established routes of commerce. So, vegetable farmers on Long Island insisted that New York put a high tariff on imports of vegetables from New Jersey. And so people in New York weren't getting their dinner anyway.

Tim Benson:

We're getting their Jersey tomatoes, man. I mean Precisely.

H.W. Brands:

So they said, come to Annapolis, and we'll fix this. And this was something that was possible. So they called a meeting, and essentially, nobody comes. So what are you gonna do? Well, they could have just said, well, it's a good idea, but nobody's on board, so let's just give it up.

H.W. Brands:

Now what they did is say they quickly shifted gears, and they said, oh, we're just kidding. This was just a preliminary convention. The real convention's gonna be held next spring in Philadelphia. So we'll get together in May in in Philadelphia, 17/87. Now at the time they said this, they had no more hope that Philadelphia would turn out better than Annapolis, but they decided just 6 months, who knows what can happen?

H.W. Brands:

Well, what happened was a minor revolution broke out in Western Massachusetts. There's a rebellion led by a guy named Daniel Shays, and it was over, of all things, taxes. Exactly the same thing that sparked the American Revolution. And here's this is the critical part. The government of Massachusetts looked like it was gonna be inadequate to put down this revolt.

H.W. Brands:

And so it really alarmed people, not only in Massachusetts, but elsewhere. Just within 5 years of the end of fighting in the Ameri, 5 years after the battle of Yorktown, now we're fighting ourselves. And the one person who was persuaded, that is freaked out by the Shays' Rebellion, was the one person whose support was absolutely necessary to Madison and Hamilton's project, who they'd been lobbying for months months to get him on board, but he wouldn't. This was George Washington. And George Washington had gone home to Mount Vernon.

H.W. Brands:

He was happy being a farmer, a planter in Mount Vernon. He didn't wanna get back in politics, and he he just didn't intend to. But when this rebellion broke out, led by veterans of his own continental army, he knew these people. He says, boy, we gotta do something about this. So he tells Madison, okay, I'm coming to your convention.

H.W. Brands:

And so when word gets out that George Washington is coming, then everything looks good. And then Sure. All sorts of other people come. And and so the different states, not all of them, but nearly all, they decide to send delegates to this convention. Now again, the purpose of the convention, the express purpose is to merely recommend amendments to the Arctic Confederation.

H.W. Brands:

And the small states, the ones that are worried about any changes, they know they've got a backstop in the form of a veto because amendments have to be unanimously approved. If one state says no, then whoever went to Philadelphia wasted their time. But they arrive in Philadelphia, and the first thing that Madison and Hamilton do is close the doors, close the windows, swear everybody to see Christie and say, you know what? We're not just gonna amend the Articles of Confederation. We're gonna write a new constitution.

H.W. Brands:

And that's what they set out to do.

Tim Benson:

Yeah. So Daniel Shea is the, real father of the constitution. There he is.

H.W. Brands:

There he is.

Tim Benson:

Yeah. So, I wanna how did they get past the finish line? Actually, I, wanna talk to you a little bit about Hamilton's, famous, very long speech where the thing that gets him sort of pegged for ever as, like, a sort of crypto monarchist, where he's making recommendations that, well, we should have the legislature should be, you know, elected for life on good behavior. We should have a lifetime executive, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Now and so this, basically shocks a lot of the other delegates who have heard it and, like, you know, we can't this is not something that but it makes, the more moderate or it makes Madison's, plan, Virginia plan seem more palatable?

Tim Benson:

Or I mean, it's so, I'm so but, anyway, so Hamilton, when he undertakes this speech, was this like a was it purposely designed to sort of shift the, for lack of a better term, the Overton window, of the debate, in the in the convention?

H.W. Brands:

Well, there's no evidence there's no evidence that Madison and Hamilton got together, and they decided, okay, Hamilton, you play the bad cop. You know? You really shock everybody. So when I come along and offer this thing just slightly less extreme, it'll sound reasonable.

Tim Benson:

Right.

H.W. Brands:

There's no evidence of that. The the 2 men had been professional, partners. They'd been they worked together in con in congress. But for the most part, they simply wrote letters to each other. And they didn't, you know, they didn't put the letters in cipher or anything like that.

H.W. Brands:

So but but in fact, at that moment, Hamilton really wasn't much more extreme than Madison. Madison had told Thomas Jefferson before the convention, what I really want to do is to dissolve the states and just have this single government. Because here's the fundamental problem that they came up against. I will add, it's the fundamental problem we still have today. We've got 2 tiers of government.

H.W. Brands:

And there was this existing tier of government, the states. And it was gonna be really hard to get the any of the states to give up their sovereignty and say, we no longer get to make laws for Maryland or Pennsylvania or Massachusetts or New Hampshire. No. We just leave that all to the central government. But but most in nearly every country in the world, not every, but nearly every country in the world, it's very clear that there is one government, and provinces are kinda like counties within states.

H.W. Brands:

They're administrative subunits, but no county in the United States thinks it can make laws independent of the state government. And that's what Madison wanted to do. But he was kinda Jefferson and I sort of talked about it. That's that's too much. That's too big an ass.

H.W. Brands:

So what he does wanna do though is he wants to establish a new central government in which representation is not by state. He says that's fundamentally wrong. I mean, it's it's just anti Republican in the sense that if you believe that power emanates from the people, well, there shouldn't be one class of people that's more powerful than another class of people just by virtue of where they live. So he said the representation should be by population, and and that was gonna be it. And he was thinking in terms originally of a unicameral legislature.

H.W. Brands:

You know? And so we'll just okay. We'll just elect by population. The big states get more representatives and that's that. But the small states had nothing doing with that.

H.W. Brands:

You know, we're gonna hang on to this one thing that we need and that is equality. Because as long as the states have equal votes with all the other states, then it's plausible to say that the states are the basis of this enterprise. And I'll I mean, I say it's an issue we still have today. I live in Texas. And in Texas, the governor of Texas lately has been just battling, you know, nose to nose of the Federal Government over who gets to control immigration?

H.W. Brands:

Who controls the Texas Southern border? So anyway but the so Madison proposes representation by population. And representatives of the smaller states and and Virginia, remind you, is the the biggest state, so it's gonna come out the best and all this. The smaller states say no dice. If you insist on that, we're going home.

H.W. Brands:

Oh, I should add something here. That early in the proceedings, they said, you know, we're not gonna go by the rule in the Arctic Confederation where you have to have unanimous agreement on this. This new constitution will take effect when 9 states ratify it. Now this led to this possibility that nobody at the constitution convention could quite get around. What happens if 9 states ratify and 4 states don't?

H.W. Brands:

We're gonna have dueling governments within the United States. What in the world is that gonna lead to? Well, we'll get to sort of where that did lead to. But anyway, so Madison is finally persuaded to accept a compromise, the compromise that we have today. So the House of Representatives by population, bigger states have more representatives, and the Senate is 1 basically, 2 senators per each.

H.W. Brands:

So the states are all equal in the Senate. So that was his compromise. Hamilton was the one who's advocated what we really need is a strong executive. Now that was the term for president, although they hadn't yet settled on the word president. But but the the the one person who is the the the symbol and the the motivator, the CEO of this new thing.

H.W. Brands:

And Hamilton thought we really need energy at the center, energy in the executive. And he was willing to go along with the idea that the the president, which is what we'll call him, would be elected. There was a question, who's gonna elect him? Should be he be elected by the legislature? That was one possibility.

H.W. Brands:

And for that fact, that's the way it was done in all

Tim Benson:

the states. Prime minister. Yeah.

H.W. Brands:

So yeah. So the states the states had their own chief executives, and about half the states called their chief executives a president. So Benjamin Franklin was president of Pennsylvania, and one of, Theodore Roosevelt's ancestors was president of Georgia during this period. We would call them governors. But anyway, so should be chosen by the states?

H.W. Brands:

That's one possibility. Chosen by the legislature. What they decided to do was a compromise. Again, they compromised pretty much everything. Not chosen by the people and not chosen by the states, but by electors who, in some cases, would be chosen by the people, but in some cases, chosen by the state legislatures, and then the electors would choose.

H.W. Brands:

And then the question is how long would this chief executive serve? And Hamilton was the one who who did sort of shock, polite opinion in the convention by saying, well, once elected, he ought to serve for life. And so this would be sort of like the pope. You know, the college of cardinals elects the pope, and then the the presumption is that the pope is gonna serve until god calls him to heaven. And and Hamilton thought that this would make the the most sense because the last thing he wanted was a president who was trying to figure out what the best thing to do to get reelected would be.

H.W. Brands:

He wanted a president who was beyond political ambition and just do the right thing for the country. Well, that one didn't quite fly either, but neither did the idea of term limits. So the president was elected for a term, but there was nothing in the constitution said, and he couldn't be elected for a second term, 3rd term, 4th, and so on forever.

Tim Benson:

Yeah. And they really didn't pay, I mean, clearly, I mean, if you just look at the constitution, you know, article 1 is much longer than article 2 or 3 combined. So, they clearly thought that Congress, should be the, sort of the main driver of the government. But, specifically, article 2, and the presidency, you can when you're when they're having the debate on it, it's like, the thing unsaid is that, I mean, everyone pretty much generally assumes that Washington's gonna be the guy. Yeah.

Tim Benson:

Right? So we can trust Washington, you know, because he's an honorable man, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I wonder how different the convention would have gone, how different article 2 would have looked if, George wasn't just hanging out back there with his the presence than he had with Well,

H.W. Brands:

in fact, they would've taken a lot more time and more care writing article 2. The as you mentioned, the great majority of the time and effort of the convention was spent writing article 1. What are the powers of congress going to be? And then they realized we're gonna have to get around to describing what the executive branch is gonna look like. But they realized, you know what?

H.W. Brands:

We'll just we'll just sketch out how this person's gonna get elected. And then they all looked at George Washington, Because

Tim Benson:

as

H.W. Brands:

because as presiding officer, he acted sort of like the speaker of the British House of Commons, where the Speaker of the House of Commons doesn't take part in debates.

Tim Benson:

Right.

H.W. Brands:

And Washington didn't take part in debates. And so when one side was going against the other side against the other side, Washington just sort of sat there, you know, just quiet, and everybody assumed he knew knew more than everybody else did about it. It also played to his strengths. His strengths was his taciturnity. He was not a debater.

H.W. Brands:

He was not a lawyer like Hamilton and Mattis and the other guys. And so just as you said, when they said, okay. So what's the president gonna be like? What's the president gonna do? They just looked over George and said, let George figure it out, Because everybody realized that would be the one.

H.W. Brands:

And they had already been in Philadelphia much longer than anybody thought. So let's just do that. Just kick it down the road. Now, in fact, in some ways, article 2 is the the most poorly written of the articles because they got entirely wrong how president should be elected. Mhmm.

H.W. Brands:

And it only took 2 competitive elections for them to realize, oh, this is screwed up. And so

Tim Benson:

Yeah. You're right. That's the that's their blind spot.

H.W. Brands:

Exactly. Well, and so there's that spot. They didn't, they didn't understand sort of ambition at work, but what they really didn't foresee was the emergence of parties. They they wrote this whole constitution in ignorance or denial of the fact that people would form semi permanent or permanent political groups, political coalitions, and they would act in terms of what those parties required as much as what the nation required. And so whole idea that presidents would run on a ticket with a vice president, Why in the world would they do that?

H.W. Brands:

And the vice president was really there simply keeping the chair warm in case the president died. And to allow the vice president to get paid, they had him become the presiding officer of the Senate, which actually confused things a lot because it left open the question, well, wait a minute. Which part of the government is the vice president part of? Is the presiding officer of the Senate? Well, that's part of the legislature.

H.W. Brands:

But but, anyway so things, took them by surprise.

Tim Benson:

Yeah. And so they get it passed, and then, excuse me, the birth of what's gonna become this this first two party system happens almost instantaneously, or the the genesis of it, during the the ratification debate between the Federalists, who obviously support the Constitution, and the anti federalists, who either don't support it or have serious qualms, about, some of the, provisions in it or, you know, or or don't support it without, a bill of rights at least or something like that. But it's but that but the the fissuring the 2 streams are gonna start almost immediately after the ratification or after the the convention.

H.W. Brands:

They do. And it reflects something that indicates that the inherent separation in politics is binary. So a bipartisan system, not 3 parties, not 4, not 5, not 6. To get multiple parties beyond 2, you have to write in special rules to encourage them. And there's a reason for 2 parties, because most political decisions ultimately come down to a yes or no.

H.W. Brands:

Do you want this constitution or do you not? Do you vote for this bill or do you not? Do you do this or do you not? If politics were a multiple choice test rather than a true or false test, then 5 parties might be the norm. Because they say it's not.

H.W. Brands:

And so in America, we've had 2 parties. Now people point to other parties, other countries that have multiple parties, but they always have to have special rules to allow small parties to sort of, fight more than their weight.

Tim Benson:

And coalition government.

H.W. Brands:

And so,

H.W. Brands:

anyway, so the first split in American history was between the Federalists, and they were named because they were in favor of this new federal government, and, well, the poorly named, but they were kinda slow off the mark, Anti Federalists. You know, if you're if you name yourself Pepsi doesn't wanna be just the anti coke, you know, it doesn't anyway. So but but the here's the here's the thing. Here's the the division. And and the division is there at the beginning, and I would argue it's the same division we have today.

H.W. Brands:

Mhmm. And the division is, do you believe in stronger government or weaker government? Do you believe in the central government or the state? That's what it come that's what it came down to. Because if you wanted a stronger federal government, then you were in favor of the Constitution.

H.W. Brands:

If you said, wait, we don't want a strong federal government, stronger one than we have, then you're against the Constitution. If you believe that the federal the central government should be supreme over the states and more powerful than it was at the time, then you wanted the constitution. If you didn't, if you thought that if government there must be, it ought to be with the states, then you were against the constitution. And I'd point out that, again, using the example of Texas, it's we're still fighting over that. Do the is the federal government the one that writes immigration laws and controls border, or is the state of Texas?

Tim Benson:

Right. Yeah. So, and I guess, get to the bill of rights and move forward a little bit, and Madison's work on it. Because it it's funny because at first, he thinks, you know, we don't need a bill of rights. I mean, it's patently obvious if you just read the damn document that, you know, the government can only do the things that we laid out, what it can do here.

Tim Benson:

But there's a very loud call for it, and, Madison thinks it's sort of a superfluous undertaking at first that, you know, we don't really need a bill of rights, but I'll go ahead and, you know, we'll go ahead and try to make one. And that way, we can sort of quell or quash the fears of, these people who are who who fear this new government and maybe you know? Because we need unity. This is a new country. We need everybody, you know, rowing in the same direction.

Tim Benson:

So we'll go ahead and give them a a bill of rights to gain their support for this new constitution and this new government. But then when he's, drafting all these amendments, he comes to realize that, oh, wait. You know what? May I think they're right, and I think we actually do need a bill of rights.

H.W. Brands:

So this is this is a great moment. And one of the reasons that I'm so drawn to Madison of the individuals I focus so I so I focus on Hamilton, Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams. And Madison intrigues me because he's a prominent example, and I would say a rare example, of someone in public life who fundamentally changes his mind on a basic issue of politics. It's rare that you see that. Sometimes people will change parties, but they always say, I didn't change.

H.W. Brands:

My party changed, you know, out from under me.

Tim Benson:

The party left me. Yeah.

H.W. Brands:

I didn't Precisely. So but Madison Madison, at the beginning, was adamantly opposed to the idea of Bill of Rights because he considered the constitution his baby. And, you know, we as you say, the the new government only has those powers that we expressly get handed to it. But they the critics said, well, wait a minute. What about that, necessary and proper clause?

H.W. Brands:

Boy, some lawyers are gonna drive Mack Trucks through them if, you know, they had Mack trucks in those days, kind of stowage or whatever. And and and Madison then did the very sort of, lawyerly thing. He said, okay, okay. I guess there's gotta be a bill of rights. Well, you know what?

H.W. Brands:

I'm gonna write the bill of rights. And so if if you gotta have rules,

Tim Benson:

you wanna He didn't want any he didn't want anyone mucking

H.W. Brands:

with his constitution.

Tim Benson:

That's right. If if someone's gonna change,

H.W. Brands:

it's gonna be me. And and in the writing, both in the reaction to the original document without the bill of rights and in the writing of the bill of rights, he really did, as you suggest, convince himself that this is not a bad idea. And, in fact, during so in the debate over ratification, Madison is an arch Federalist. He's all in favor of ratification. And he, Hamilton, and John Jay collaborate to write the Federalist Papers.

H.W. Brands:

And so these are presumably the authoritative statement of what it is that this Constitution is all about. But it no sooner gets ratified, and Congress is elected and goes to work, and Madison is assigned. Okay. Write these or, write these write these bill of rights, the amendments. And he begins to think, you know, maybe maybe we pressed a little bit too far.

H.W. Brands:

There it's that, but it's also because once Hamilton gets into federal office, George Washington names him secretary of the treasury. And Hamilton has this exaggerated notion, or at least I should say, a very grand, broad notion of what the federal government ought to do and what he ought to be able to do within the federal government, then Madison begins to wonder, my god. What have I created here? And so he realized that somebody like Hamilton is exactly whose hands have to be tied by this bill of rights because there's no telling where he's gonna take this government.

Tim Benson:

Yeah. Speaking of Hamilton, just sort of side topic, it's, every time I read Hamilton, I remember when I read, you know, a long time ago when Ron Chernow's book came out on Hamilton. The dude is just, like, freakishly freakishly intelligent. I mean, it's like an intimidating amount of intelligence. And, it's it's and you kinda get that feeling that all the other, founders or all, you know, his peers sort of felt that way too, where, like, all these guys in general are the smartest guy in the room, but, like, Hamilton is the smartest guy in the room among all the other really smart guys.

Tim Benson:

And there's this it almost seems like there's this, at least from the Republican side, this fear of going toe to toe with Hamilton publicly on an issue. Like, Jefferson always begs off doing it and, you know, goes to Madison, says, like, here. You gotta do this. You gotta you know? And Madison's like, well, you know, I don't really want to, but, I mean, if you say so, I'll, I mean, I'll try.

Tim Benson:

But, you know, I, they just I don't know. There's something about Hamilton that, intellectually that seemed to, I don't know if intimidated, but, it was a his his intellect was very striking. And Yeah.

H.W. Brands:

Yeah. So Hamilton was very gifted. There's no question about it. But he also labored I may say and he also labored under what you could call sort of a social inferiority complex. Oh, absolutely.

H.W. Brands:

Because he had no family connections. His formal education was very limited. And so he he adopted the same philosophy that Benjamin Franklin did, who was also self educated. But Benjamin Franklin had a much more agreeable patina that he put on top of it, a veneer. Franklin was smooth and easy to get along with.

H.W. Brands:

With, with Hamilton, those sharp elbows were out all the time. Yeah.

Tim Benson:

There was kind of a chip with Hamilton. There was. Yeah.

H.W. Brands:

And so and so he didn't know what he wasn't supposed to know or what he wasn't supposed to be able to do. And so the fact that as a junior aide on the staff of George Washington during the revolutionary war, he should write letters to George Clinton, the governor of New York, Hamilton State, and say, and this is how we ought to change the government as soon as this revolution is over. The guy, as I said, he's 25 years old. Although it's a little bit might have been 24, might have been 26. It's hard to know exactly when he was born.

H.W. Brands:

But for somebody that young to do that, it was exceedingly brash. And there's no question, he was he was a very good arguer. And so people and he all he also just never gave up. And so he mentioned that that Jefferson didn't wanna take him on. Jefferson, he was I think he took lessons from Washington in the sense that Washington let silence be his superpower.

H.W. Brands:

And Jefferson couldn't quite get away with it because he wasn't Washington, But Jefferson never responded to any criticism, never to any scandal, never to anything. Now and and I should add here that during this period, both the Jefferson side, the Republicans, Jefferson, Madison, and their followers, they all believed that partisanship was really unwarranted, it was borderline unethical, maybe unpatriotic. And they did not think that what they did was partisanship. No. No.

H.W. Brands:

It's what that other side did. So we're a long way yet in American politics from the idea that we need a robust 2 party system. Each side was all in favor of its own group, but it didn't call them parties. It's those other guys that are parties and partisans and all this other stuff. So when Jefferson enlists Madison, well, Madison doesn't really wanna do it either because he knows that Hamilton's really good at and Hamilton will never give up.

H.W. Brands:

So if he signs on to this, he might be doing this forever because everything that he says, Hamilton will come back and say something else.

H.W. Brands:

And,

H.W. Brands:

yes, I got other things to do with my spine.

Tim Benson:

Yeah. Yeah. If you ever wanna be, sort of depressed, be in your late twenties and read, like, Hamilton's report on the public credit or something. It's just like, oh, man. Yeah.

H.W. Brands:

Anyway. My life. Why can't I

Tim Benson:

do this? Like, how is this possible that this kid is this freaking bright? Anyway, so moving on again a little bit. So you already mentioned we've been talking about this tremendous skepticism regarding the role of political parties, of faction. But very quickly, everybody sort of seems to make their peace with it.

Tim Benson:

You know, it's, by January of 17/92, so not even 5 years after the writing of the constitution, Madison is declaring, you know, that, you know, in every political society, the parties are unavoidable. It's just a fact of nature, and there's nothing we can do about it. You know? We're I know we're 4 and he's writing the you know, he's warning against faction 4 years earlier and that, like, it's we have to avoid faction or we have to counteract faction, but, etcetera, etcetera. But, you know, within 5 years, he's just throwing up his hands.

Tim Benson:

He's like, yeah. It's it's it's a part of life.

H.W. Brands:

Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Benson:

In any political society, even in republics, apparently. Right.

H.W. Brands:

Yeah.

Tim Benson:

Yeah. Yeah.

H.W. Brands:

So But but I would I should add that they still didn't acknowledge the legitimacy of the other party, And this is demonstrated by the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, which the Federalists who controlled Congress and the the executive at that time, they essentially outlawed criticism of the president and his administration. And people who violated this, editors who wrote editorials critical of John Adams, got thrown into prison. And so and, of course, this is in striking violation,

Tim Benson:

the system.

H.W. Brands:

Absolutely. But then that raises the question. And one of the really, striking interesting things about this story is it's really clear that they are figuring this out as they go along. Because the constitution says that there are these 3 separate branches of government, but it doesn't say exactly who is going to reign in any of the branches when the branches overstep. And the real question so a president can veto a bill of Congress.

H.W. Brands:

So that's a check on Congress. Congress, though, can override the veto. And exactly what the job of the Supreme Court is at that point is unclear. It takes cases from separate states, but it's not written into the constitution. The Supreme Court can be a check on Congress.

H.W. Brands:

So the First Amendment, which upon ratification becomes as much a part of the Constitution as any of the rest of it, says that Congress shall pass no laws of bridging freedom of the press. And then, when in 17/98, Congress passes exactly such a law, okay. What's the redress? How do you check how do you tell Congress you can't do that? Now after another 100 years, Americans would have concluded, well, that's what the Supreme Court is for.

H.W. Brands:

But nobody had even mentioned the Supreme Court is doing that at this point. And so it leads to this, well, this moment where the vice president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, is sabotaging the president of the United States and indeed undercutting the whole idea of the constitution with his doctrine of nullification.

Tim Benson:

Yeah. Actually, I guess, yeah, why don't we talk about nullification a little bit, the Kentucky resolutions and the Virginia resolutions and what they were trying to accomplish with those

H.W. Brands:

Yes. So there's this basic question. Who is going to reign in Congress if Congress gets carried away with itself and and reign in the executive if the if the executive goes along? The the Supreme Court hasn't stepped up to do this yet, and the Supreme Court at this point was supreme only over the lower federal courts. Supreme over the states?

H.W. Brands:

Who knew? Supreme over Congress? Probably not. And so we've got this test case after the Alien and Sedition Acts. And Jefferson and Madison, and they're doing this on the sly.

H.W. Brands:

They don't admit that they're doing it. They don't do this in public. They say the only recourse when the federal government gets out of control is for the states to step in, and the states shall nullify a federal law, which which means that Virginia, for example, will simply refuse to enforce this law or to allow the law to be enforced within its boundaries. And so and it was easier for a state to do that in those days when there was essentially no federal law enforcement authority. There were federal there would be federal marshals, but there's no Department of Justice at that point.

H.W. Brands:

And so this this Virginia resolution say that these laws are in violation of the constitution and are null and void. Now this didn't come to a constitutional crisis because the Adams administration did not insist on continuing to enforce the law, and the law had a sunset clause anyway. And it would end, on the inauguration of the next president. And so nothing really had to be done about it. But it one of the things it did was it discredited the Federalists.

H.W. Brands:

And as a result of the uproar over this, they lost badly in the congressional and presidential election of 1800.

Tim Benson:

But never recovered really. But the

H.W. Brands:

other thing it did was to plant the seeds of what do the states do when the federal government has overstepped. And John Calhoun, later a senator from South Carolina, would pick this up and really developed this fully elaborated doctrine of nullification. This is what states can do. And then then the question is, if a state nullifies and the federal government tries to enforce over the nullification, what does the state do then? Well, Madison didn't say it.

H.W. Brands:

Jefferson didn't say it, but the implication was there. You secede from the union. You leave the union.

Tim Benson:

But didn't Madison later on, much later towards the end of his life, basically say that secession is not a,

H.W. Brands:

a That's right. So Madison disavowed the idea that nullification first of all, he nullification hadn't come up during his presidency. And and and once he became president, he became much more enamored of federal authority. Once you've held that office, you really don't wanna see the country.

Tim Benson:

Love that Bank of the United States. Yeah.

H.W. Brands:

Yeah. Yeah. But both Jefferson was more forthright in 1798 in saying this might lead to that. Madison used softer language. Basically, what Madison wanna do is fire a shot across the bow of federal government and say, don't do that.

H.W. Brands:

You know, get your get your act together. Stay in line. But none of them wanted to carry this thing through the but, you know, you have to figure out. So what do you do with? And if this doesn't work, what do you do then?

H.W. Brands:

And who has the final say? And when it came down to it, of course, the 11 states that seceded in the 18 sixties, they said, when push comes to shove, the states have the ultimate authority. And Abraham Lincoln said, you do not, and they fought a war over. And at the end of the civil war, no minds had been changed, but the behavior of the rebellious states have been changed, and nobody's tried to secede ever since. However, however, once again, coming back to the question of Texas, well, I should it's not just Texas.

H.W. Brands:

So this idea of sanctuary cities or, these are all over the country.

Tim Benson:

Or drug laws. Yes.

H.W. Brands:

These essentially nullify federal immigration laws.

Tim Benson:

Mhmm.

H.W. Brands:

And nobody's made a big deal of it at this point, but it's still there. This again, this question of what do the states do when the federal government oversteps?

Tim Benson:

Or it's just like marijuana laws too. I mean

H.W. Brands:

Oh, precisely. Yeah. Exactly. I mean,

Tim Benson:

every it's still it's still on the books as a whatever type a or type 1 Yeah. Substance that, you know, you're not allowed to smoke it or grow it or sell it. But, I mean, it's that's sort of like a dead letter at this point. Right. You know, federal authority.

Tim Benson:

But, one thing I do wanna talk about a little bit, but before we go, because it's ensuring, the the birth of the of the partisan press, during this period and how it, it's, an offshoot really of of of this, system, this bifurcating, you know, these 2 parties.

H.W. Brands:

Yeah. So this is still the early days of newspapers generally. So the idea that somebody prints up the news and disseminates it, it in America dated from the very late 17th century, early 18th century. But they were more like newsletters, and they just okay. This for sale, you know, horse ran away, helped me catch it.

H.W. Brands:

Slave ran away, helped me catch him, and so on. But the idea that they should take part in a political debate, that's relatively new. And it comes with the territory of having a republic because the people get to decide questions of political importance, and now the people need to be informed. And there was no concept in those days of a neutral for the state, a a neutral journalism. This is okay.

H.W. Brands:

You get to air your side. You get to air your side. Newspapers were expensive to produce relative to the cost of living in those days, And so people had to have a motive to produce them. And they weren't they usually weren't profit making ventures. So the political parties, they began to sponsor people who would promote their points of view.

H.W. Brands:

And arguably, something like the Federalist Papers was part of this. So they they these were originally printed as editorials, op ed pieces, and they were running friendly newspapers. And and in those days, it was very clear. If you knew the newspapers in a given city or a given state, you know, okay, these are the Federalist Papers and these are the Republican papers. And sometimes it was very clear.

H.W. Brands:

So Jefferson, as head of the Republican party, hired somebody who who worked for him when he was secretary of state to also put out this newspaper that presents the Republican side of the story, and the Federalists had their own. And for people like me, sort of who grew up in the golden age of, 3 television news channels and the the main channels and major papers like the New York Times and The Washington Post where the model was, the journalists play it down the middle, and they report opinions on both sides. Well, that that's an anomaly in American history. Before then and then, of course, after now, you get to choose your political your news outlet, and you choose your outlet or very often depending on your point of view. And, of course, this tends to reinforce the partisan division.

H.W. Brands:

If you just read people who agree with you, you tend to think you're great.

Tim Benson:

Well, it's it's you read it for affirmation, not for information, basically. Yeah. So, yeah, there's nothing new under the sun, and people sort of I but, you know, the that journalistic model, the impartial, you know, each side gets its say, etcetera, etcetera. I mean, it clearly never lived up to its, reputation or to its, ideals. I mean, because there's just bias is just you know, you can't people's biases just so show through whether they want them to or not.

Tim Benson:

It's just, you know, some it's just human nature.

H.W. Brands:

Well, it's also good morning. It was a technological artifact, and it was imposed on the world because the the broadcast stream had relatively narrow bandwidth. It could only accommodate 3 networks. And and as soon as along came cable TV where you get a 500 networks, then it goes away. It never was really applied to newspapers.

H.W. Brands:

And so in the city of New York in 19th century, there were 10 actively competing daily newspapers. And you knew which one was the Lincoln Republican, which was the Democrat, and so on. And it was true in other cities around. So if there was that sort of window between about 19 30 and, 1980 where the when when people started getting their news via actually, really from 19 fifties to early 19 eighties, when they got the news on television, that's where the fairness doctrine was imposed by the government. Again, for this reason, the technological capacity.

H.W. Brands:

But take that away, and now there's no reason at all for newspapers to be fair. Because, as you say, people like to read for affirmations, especially it's for information, and so let them choose the one they want.

Tim Benson:

Yeah. And at least it's more honest. You know? Like, I the the thing that still drives me nuts is the reporters that, or journalists that, like, refuse to admit that there is any sort of bias one way or the other. Or Well,

Tim Benson:

I mean,

Tim Benson:

I I wouldn't that that

H.W. Brands:

I wouldn't go that far because, I mean, if I mean, I encounter this in the academic world, and and people will say, okay. You know, you might as well admit on the the first day of the semester what your politics are. And I don't go along with that. And the reason I don't go along with that is it makes sense. And if you think that everything is political, that's because you think politics is the most important thing in the world.

H.W. Brands:

True. And so on the other hand, there are other things that are more important. Scientists, you know, usually don't think that politics is more important than finding a cure for cancer. I mean, there's some that do, but most don't. And I think it's entirely possible for journalists to say, I'm gonna report the story.

H.W. Brands:

And, of course, that's why a lot of papers distinguish the the news pages from the the editorial pages. And The Wall Street Journal's a good example. The Wall Street Journal's news pages, they report things fairly straight up. Now, you know, the the editorial pages you that's where you expect to get this land. And I think it's also it's it's worth even if you cannot be entirely unbiased by your own personal experiences, I don't think it's a bad thing to try to be unbiased.

H.W. Brands:

Oh, no.

Tim Benson:

No. I I agree with that. But Yeah. My my point is saying it's just like a a quote, unquote straight reporter. You know, you'll read a, you'll read a piece, and it's clear the conclusion was reached.

Tim Benson:

The conclusion was reached before the piece was written, and the people, that they talked to so we brought in so so and so from this tank think tank, you know, says this. And and here's this report from, you know, this organization. And all of those organizations tend to skew one direction. And, and, or or just the way that, this is just me griping as a as a conservative. But, you know, like, the Brookings Institution, right, will just be and and so and so from the Brookings Institution, a think tank, blah blah blah

H.W. Brands:

blah blah. Right.

Tim Benson:

Whereas if it say, well, someone from the American Enterprise Institute, a right leaning think tank.

H.W. Brands:

Right.

Tim Benson:

Well, you know what I mean? So you you sort of see that thing all the time. That's my I don't

H.W. Brands:

Okay. If I put on my this back Yeah. I wanna root this back in history because it raises a key point here. The Federalist Papers were written by these 3 guys who were all in favor of the the constitution, but they didn't sign it. Actually, they signed it under the pseudonym Publius.

H.W. Brands:

And editorials in those days were almost always unsigned or signed under a pseudonym. And the theory was that an argument has to stand on its own merits. It can't stand on the authority of the person making the argument because you don't even know who made the argument.

Tim Benson:

I mean, The Economist did that forever. I don't I don't know if they still do it. Precisely.

H.W. Brands:

Yeah. The Economist still does. That They

Tim Benson:

still do. Okay.

H.W. Brands:

I mean, yeah, but, The New York Times used to do it, and and reporters didn't make as much money. They weren't such stars as they are now. Once you put people's name on it, then they develop a brand and so on. But I think there's a lot to be said for that earlier version. And so we assume that you, dear reader, have the intelligence to make up your own mind.

H.W. Brands:

And so somebody presents an argument, and you read the argument, and you say, okay. Does the evidence support the conclusion? If not, then I'll read another one. And, you know, you could usually tell. I mean, somebody will say, here, I'm in favor of the Constitution and here's why.

H.W. Brands:

And there were people who were there were anti Federalists. There was an anti Federalist papers as well, and they were writing against. But because you don't know who they are, they have to make their case on the evidence. And I I think there'd be a lot to be gained by bringing back that practice.

Tim Benson:

Oh, I agree. But in the world of social media and building a brand, you know, it seems like a lot of a lot of reporters at these major papers, I mean, there's no sort of institutional, loyalty is not really a thing anymore. It's just just how does this further me, this, reporter, this brand that I'm building, and how do I, you know, how do I use the the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post or the New York Times or the LA Times or something as a stepping stone to something

H.W. Brands:

Right.

Tim Benson:

More lucrative or, so I think that I think that ship has sailed. But anyway, alright. Just wrapping up a little bit. Just one more thing, really. I guess just the the significance of the election of 1800 or or what Jefferson, would call the revolution of 1800.

Tim Benson:

Why I mean, granted we know all of the the happenstance with that election where, you know, Jefferson and Burr tie, you know, in the electoral college, and then there's this fight over you know, the federals are like, Now we can, you know, cause some, you know, we can cause some mischief here. But, really, what does the election of 1800, beyond that, why is it so important?

H.W. Brands:

In any system that holds elections, the most important election is not the first election. That's always easy to hold. And it's not necessarily the second election. The most important election is the first election in which the incumbents lose. How do they respond?

H.W. Brands:

Do they try to overturn the election? Do they try to deny the results of the election? Or do they say, okay, we lost. We'll step out and we'll try harder and win next time. This was the question in 1800 because 1800 was the first time when the Federalists got chucked out.

H.W. Brands:

And Adams, the Federalist president, the Federalist Congress, they lose. Will they leave office? Will they go gently? What will they do? There was a lot of talk about trying to undermine this.

H.W. Brands:

And in fact, I I begin my book with the prologue of Adams dealing with exactly this question. And I would say, Jefferson called it the revolution of 1800 because and he said it's a peaceful revolution, because the incumbents, the party in power handed over power peacefully. That might not have happened. In a lot of other places, it didn't happen. It doesn't happen.

H.W. Brands:

I would add that it became the norm in American history. But there's still always the possibility, after any election, If the incumbents lose, do they leave? And it became more than a hypothetical when Donald Trump denied the outcome of the 2020 election. Now he did actually physically vacate the White House, but he still hasn't acknowledged that he lost. And so we'll see how attached American voters are to that principle that was established.

H.W. Brands:

And again, what Jefferson called this revolution of 1800. Do we abide by the results of the election as best we can count the results or not? Do we say, no. That's not right. You know, if voters decide, okay, they're gonna vote Donald Trump back into office, then implicitly they're endorsing his idea that the election of of 2020 was stolen.

H.W. Brands:

We'll see. And Yeah. I guess that is both the challenge and the promise of any system of self government. You gotta keep doing the right thing again and again and again. And if some time at some point you break the chain, there's no telling what's gonna come Yeah.

H.W. Brands:

I

Tim Benson:

know. I'm very much not looking forward to November, whatever way happened, because I just, like, I can just see it now as clear as day. You know, if, if, Trump wins, which is looking more and more likely if you read all the polling that's coming out. This seems at this point that Biden is the underdog. You know, if Trump wins, then the the MAGA crowd are gonna be like, see, we told you 2020 was rigged.

H.W. Brands:

Yeah.

Tim Benson:

And then if Trump loses, it's gonna be, see. We told you. They're all rigged. And then and then if and and then the Democrats, you know, I mean, these people like Hillary Clinton and, the the woman who's the press secretary for, all these people that were saying, well, Trump, illegitimate win in 2016 because it was the Russian collusion and all this, and, you know, he didn't really win. This this sort of bipartisan just turn towards, like, we are not going to accept as legitimate, the other side if they win, however they win.

Tim Benson:

I mean, you basically have to win, you know, now by a blowout to, to just to get everybody to, like, see, they actually won. Where if it's anywhere close, it's just, you know, they'll each side will build in their own excuses, whether it's voter suppression

H.W. Brands:

or

Tim Benson:

voter fraud and, you know, ballot harvesting and all this other crap. It's very,

H.W. Brands:

it

Tim Benson:

I don't know. It's it's very, concerning.

H.W. Brands:

It is. And there's another way of interpreting the election of 1800, and that is Adams and the Federalists, to their credit, made the decision that the system is bigger than any one candidate, is bigger than any one any one party at this moment of time. And that's a decision that every in every subsequent election until 2020, presidents and elected officials had made. Okay? It's more important that we have the next election.

H.W. Brands:

It's more important that we accept the results of this election because we have to keep having these elections. Otherwise, all this stuff that we worked for, it comes crashing down. You know, there's no there's no guarantee of immortality for institutions in human affairs.

Tim Benson:

It's a miracle. We've made it this far, honestly.

H.W. Brands:

Well, so when I'm feeling when I'm feeling pessimistic about what I've read and written about lately, And I look at partisan politics today, I say, oh my god. It's been partisanship from the very beginning. And so it's never gonna go away. It's always been like this. It's always gonna be like this.

H.W. Brands:

But when I'm feeling optimistic, I say, it's always been like this, and it hasn't killed us yet. So it probably won't kill us for a while. So Yeah. I'd like to leave on that.

Tim Benson:

Yeah. Absolutely. Alright. Okay. So before we go, last, you know, exit question.

Tim Benson:

I don't know. Maybe you just sort of touched on it, but, you know, the normal one I always ask, and that's, you know, what what would you like the audience to get out of this book? Or, you know, what's the one thing you'd want a reader to take away from the book having read it?

H.W. Brands:

That although American democracy, American experiment in self government is over 2 centuries old, it has to be reaffirmed. It has to be, it has to have a vote of confidence every time people go to the polls. And if the government is only as good as the people, and if the people insist on good officials, we'll get good officials. If people are willing to accept lousy officials, we'll get lousy officials. So it's up to us as citizens of the United States.

Tim Benson:

Alright. Well said. Alright. Once again, the book is Founding Partisans, Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Adams, and the Burling Birth of American Politics. Kinda miffed that we didn't really get a chance to talk about Adams too much because, there's something about his, cantankerousness that, sort of warms the cockles of my heart.

Tim Benson:

Beloved Will Crouch. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's he's he's a trip.

Tim Benson:

But, anyway, it's a, fantastic, fantastic book as always. You know, if you've listened to this podcast before or any of the episodes I've had with doctor Brands, as I mentioned, I have a a whole shelf full of his books. You can't really see it, off camera, but it's right over here, the whole shelf of them. And they're always highly informative, well paced, well read, just very, great works of history. So always always a pleasure having you on.

Tim Benson:

Always, a pleasure reading your book. So thank you so much again for taking the time, to come on the podcast and talk to us about it. And, you know, thank you for taking the time to, you know, write another one.

H.W. Brands:

Well, good to talk to you, Tim. Keep up the good work.

Tim Benson:

Alright. Thank you. Okay. And, again, if you like this podcast, please consider leaving us a 5 star review and sharing with your friends. And if you have any questions or comments or if you have any, book ideas you'd like to see discussed on the podcast or anything like that, you can feel free to reach out to me at tbenson@heartland.org.

Tim Benson:

That's t b e n s o n@heartland.org. And for more information about the Heartland Institute, you can just go to heartland.org, and we do have our, Twitter account. You can follow us there at, illbooks@illbooks. So check that out. Oh, doctor Brands.

Tim Benson:

Oh, he's already left. Anyway, so he's gone, but I was gonna ask him about his Twitter account. You should actually follow that too because he does a little interesting, little, like, poll not like a poll question, but a little quiz every day in his Twitter account. It's pretty neat about a different person. So, you wanna look for him too.

Tim Benson:

So, anyway, that's pretty much it for this time. So, we'll see you guys next time. Thanks for listening, everyone. Take care. Love you, Robbie.

Tim Benson:

Love you, mom. Bye bye.

Singer:

Because baby now we got bad blood. You know we used to be mad love, so take a look what you've done. Because baby now we got bad blood. Hey. Now we got problems, and I don't think we can solve them.

Singer:

You made a really deep cut and baby now we got fat blood. Hey.

Singer:

Did you have to do this? I was thinking that you could be trusted. Did you have to ruin what was shining? Now it's all rusted. Did you have to hit me where I'm weak, baby?

Singer:

I couldn't breathe and rub it in so deep. Salt in the wood like you're laughing right at me. Oh, it's so sad too.

Singer:

Think about the good times you and I. Because bad blood. Now we got problems and I don't think we can solve them. You made a really deep

Singer:

Did you think we'd be fine? Still got scars on my back from your knife, so don't think it's in the past. These kind of wounds, they larcenate last now. Did you think it all through? All these things will catch up to you.

Singer:

And time can heal, but this won't. So if you're coming my way, just don't.

Singer:

Oh, it's so sad to think about the good times it used to be bad though, so take a look what you've done. Because baby now we got bad blood. Cut. And baby now we got fabric.

Singer:

Band aids don't fix bullet holes. You'll say sorry just for show. If you live like that, you live with ghosts. Band Aids don't fix bullet holes. You say sorry just for show.

Singer:

If you live like that, you live with those.

Singer:

If you love like that, blood