Defining Hamiltonianism vs. Jeffersonianism
One can find links for Jeffersonian or Jacksonian democracies. “Hamiltonianism,” however, often links back to a biography of Alexander Hamilton — thoroughly unhelpful in a conversation about resurrecting the Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian models for contemporary American politics.
At a broad overview, Hamiltonianism can be summarized as proactive stewardship of the economy and the national interest through a strong executive, a centralized government, an interventionist economic policy, and classical conservatism guiding social policy — namely, in the strengthening of the Union. Geographically, Hamiltonianism has historically been favored in Northern and industrialized states, first seen in the areas favorable to the Federalist Party, Whigs, and Northern Republicans before 1988.
Conversely, Jeffersonianism prefers a weak executive, decentralization to the states, laissez-faire economics, and classical liberalism in social policy. To this day, Jeffersonianism, as might be recognizable to some observers, remains a mainstay of Southern politics and has been carried by the Democratic-Republican, Democratic, and, more recently, Republican parties.
Rise of Ubiquitous Jeffersonianism
Today, the labels of Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian are not used in their own right, except to classify the political alignment of figures within a political party. This usage is inane; one is either a Hamiltonian, a Jeffersonian, or nothing. The modern party label is worth its weight in ballot access. What truly matters, what truly dictates policy and one’s vision for the country, are these two ideologies that have dueled with one another since the Washingtonian era.
Modern-day Jeffersonians are found in both parties, with libertarian and small government advocates championing his classical liberalism and liberals and progressives utilizing his concern for the common man. Hamiltonians, on the other hand, are dispersed and effectively party-less, especially after Herbert Croly, the founding editor of ‘The New Republic,’ coined the phrase, “Hamiltonian ends with Jeffersonian means,” thereby beginning the synthesis of Jeffersonian social policy with Hamiltonian methodology. To this, this author calls for Hamiltonian ends to be achieved by Hamiltonian means, and vice versa for the Jeffersonians. To this, this author calls for reclaiming and reunifying Hamiltonianism, so that it might be properly advocated again.
How, one might ask, have we arrived at this situation, where Hamiltonians are party-less and Jeffersonianism reigns supreme? To answer this question, a general background and outline of the Hamiltonian-Jeffersonian trajectory is in order.
The figure of Hamilton, today a Broadway and cultural figure, can be best described, in summation, as a New York lawyer who famously defended the new Constitution with the ‘Federalist Papers,’ alongside John Jay, a future Federalist, and James Madison, a repentant Jeffersonian, followed by Hamilton becoming the architect of America’s economic system as Secretary of the Treasury. The Federalist Party, of which Hamilton was the leader, had only one formally affiliated president in John Adams. The election of 1800 thereafter saw the dominance of the Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans and the Jacksonian Democratic Party, with occasional victories for the Whig Party, a bastardized version of the Federalist economic program and an anti-Jacksonian presidency. It was the order, economic expansion, nationalism, centralization, planning, and technocracy of Hamilton against the classical liberalism and the “excessively individualized democracy” of Jefferson, to quote Croly.
After the Civil War, Jefferson was seen as a fellow traveler of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, given his association with slavery, states’ rights, and agrarianism. It was not long before Jefferson regained his lost seat at the pantheon of Founders, as the last Hamiltonian, Theodore Roosevelt, was succeeded by the conservative Taft and the Jeffersonian Woodrow Wilson. Attempts to put Hamilton on par with Lincoln within the Republican Party were overshadowed by Democrat Claude G. Bowers’ work to deify Jefferson as the man of the people — the poor, oppressed, yeomen, and workers — against the Hamiltonians: the rich, the Northerners, and the Republicans. Once Franklin Roosevelt delivered his famed Commonwealth Club Address and pitted the “haves” against the “have nots,” the New Deal was framed as a Jeffersonian fight against the Hamiltonian “haves,” or Republicans. The political story has since become a little more familiar, the parties’ geographic bases switching after Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan effectively lobbied Southern, Jeffersonian support for the Republican Party. After the Clinton years, Clinton himself a Southern Democrat battling small government Republicans, the current adoption of Jefferson in both parties became clearer, and the conflict between Hamiltonianism and Jeffersonianism was effectively forgotten.
Modern Jeffersonianism has since been intertwined with social liberalism, social democracy, and social harmony on the left and small government and individual liberty on the right.
Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians
It is then helpful in a modern context to look at the careers of the following individuals to gain further insights and precedents for Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians in action, once they held office.
For the Hamiltonians, the foremost were Hamilton himself, John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Dewey, Earl Warren, Dwight Eisenhower, Nelson Rockefeller, George H.W. Bush, George Pataki, and Michael Bloomberg. Most were Northerners or Westerners by heritage and geographic representation, as the map of the 80th Congress represented. (Indeed, it is why Republicans were able to win in states like Illinois or New York through the 1990s.)
For the Jeffersonians, their paragons were Democratic presidents from Thomas Jefferson, through Andrew Jackson, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, as the modern parties began to both fully adopt Jeffersonianism with the legacy of the New Deal and Great Society for the Democrats or Ronald Reagan’s neo-Goldwaterism and the populist Tea Partyism/Trumpism of the Republicans. In essence, the Hamiltonians became party-less at the national level, as both parties became their respective versions of Jeffersonian.
If Hamiltonianism is to be resurrected, it is the recognition that this previously dominant school of American political thought has been forgotten, leaving a hole where men like Abraham Lincoln or Theodore Roosevelt once stood. A clearer dichotomy between Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian in today’s politics would be far more meaningful for the discourse at-large.
