Ron Chernow: Alexander Hamilton Would Support Impeachment

Lloyd Lofthouse

Diane Ravitch's blog

Ron Chernow, author of Hamilton, wrote in the Washington Post that Trump is the populist demagogue that Alexander Hamilton feared and warned about in The Federalist Papers.

He wrote:

There seems little doubt, given his writings on the presidency, that Hamilton would have been aghast at Trump’s behavior and appalled by his invitation to foreign actors to meddle in our elections. As a result, he would most certainly have endorsed the current impeachment inquiry. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Trump embodies Hamilton’s worst fears about the kind of person who might someday head the government.

Among our founders, Hamilton’s views count heavily because he was the foremost proponent of a robust presidency, yet he also harbored an abiding fear that a brazen demagogue could seize the office. That worry helps to explain why he analyzed impeachment in such detail: He viewed it as a crucial instrument to…

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Responses to “Ron Chernow: Alexander Hamilton Would Support Impeachment”

  1. Alicia Butcher Ehrhardt Avatar
    Alicia Butcher Ehrhardt

    Thanks for the link. An American growing up in Mexico, I missed a lot of what back then would have been Civics – and American History.

    I know of the documents produced by the Founding Fathers, but haven’t read as much as I should.

    Reply
    1. Lloyd Lofthouse Avatar
      Lloyd Lofthouse

      Even if you had lived in the U.S. when you were growing up, the odds are that you would not have been exposed to all of the individual histories of each of the Founders. Teachers do not have time to teach everything in that kind of detail. What is taught is often a summary of the most important points of U.S. History but not the histories of the individuals that made that history happen. To learn that, readers have to read on their own outside of class.

      Reply
      1. Alicia Butcher Ehrhardt Avatar
        Alicia Butcher Ehrhardt

        I probably would have done the reading – huge reader here. But we had no library in Mexico, nothing in English, nowhere I could find, say, The Federalist Papers to read on my own.

      2. Lloyd Lofthouse Avatar
        Lloyd Lofthouse

        By the time I reached high school, I was an avid reader of a lot of historical fiction. Often reading two books a day explaining why I did not do much homework and barely qualified to graduate.

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