Why I Think Alexander Hamilton's Big Constitutional Convention Speech Is Worth Reading Today

This, I think, is the raw Hamilton—the Hamilton of the "Federalist" is curbing his tongue & talking his book. Washington had thrown his weight behind the Constitutional Convention, and so Hamilton...

This, I think, is the raw Hamilton—the Hamilton of the "Federalist" is curbing his tongue & talking his book. Washington had thrown his weight behind the Constitutional Convention, and so Hamilton would ride the horse to the end—even though he thought, I believe, that good government required Washington be not President but Monarch…

Neither the pressure-group bastard offspring of 1960s “participatory democracy” pushed forward by America’s non-liberal Left nor the encrusted representative-democratic institutions that descend from the choices made back in 1787 defended by us wimpy centrist Liberals have served us well. So how do we create governmental competence and the responsiveness of public power to the needs and values of the people, and avoid being thrust back into the territory of the perpetual vibration between anarchy and despotism?…

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Of all the things this past month that have convinced me that America’s non-liberal Left—that is, those who explicitly define themselves as not wimpy American centrist liberals—was this from the respected David Dayen & my friend Marshall Steinbaum. Dayen:

Ezra Klein and Matthew Yglesias… believe… [in] “a liberalism that builds”… [as] self-described “supply-side progressives.”… [But] the answer is not a liberalism that builds, but a liberalism that builds power…. The idea that increasing manufacturing capacity should take precedence over making sure somebody has a good job… [that] democracy—the ability for the public to express their views on matters that will affect them and get a hearing—isn’t worth the trouble…. There’s something uniquely un-American [here]…. “A liberalism that builds boils down to the idea that… elites must make the sound enlightened decisions because they don’t trust democracy or politics.” Supply-side progressives like Yglesias and Klein are… less concerned with the problem of power as an impediment to progress. And they’re certainly not interested in equalizing that power… <https://prospect.org/economy/2023-05-25-liberalism-that-builds-power/>

As Noah Smith noted:

Dayen’s prioritization of “power” conceals a rhetorical sleight of hand. Instead of progressive leaders’ power to get things done, he means activists’ and unions’ power to extract money and other concessions from progressives by blocking them from getting things done. The power Dayen envisions is not power over nature or the state or America in general, but power within the Democratic party and the progressive movement. It was this same vision of “power” that led the Biden administration to hobble many of its own efforts with “community benefit” programs and other contracting requirements… [that] often reached into the absurd…. Mandating that the Department of Transportation hold a block party in order to build an EV charger is, frankly, silly…. It’s emblematic of how out-of-touch the people who make these policies are…. [And] it’s also indicative of a focus on veto power within the Democratic party and veto power over the state, instead of on building state power itself

Biden's tarnished industrial legacy

For Dayen and Steinbaum, “democracy” is not the people choosing representatives who share their values who then deliberate and decide in an institutional context set up to draw on expertise and reach considered judgments. “Politics” is not those who want to be representatives showing they understand the people’s values and concerns. Rather, democracy is “the ability for the public to express their views on matters that will affect them and get a hearing” by routing-around the elected governmental representative-and-bureaucracy structure by giving mobilized pressure groups a veto over all programs and hence a seat at the table. And “politics” is the creation and mobilization of such pressure groups.

Dayen and Steinbaum appear to think that the accusation that America’s wimpy centrist liberals like Ezra Klein and Matthew Yglesias “don’t trust democracy or politics”—with their definitions of those—is some kind of trump card. It is indeed a Trump card, but one that the reality of Donald Trump’s reïnauguration next week turns their attempt to play it into a big loser. Bluntly, Trump’s reëlection is the greatest proof positive that the Dayen and Steinbaum bastard offspring of 1960s “participatory democracy” has failed them, and us. But Trump’s reëlection isalso the greatest proof positive that the encrusted representative democracy we have built on the foundations of 1787 has failed us as well.

So, for me at least, it is time to go back to look at the voices calling at America’s beginning for a somewhat different institutional road than the one it has followed. And chief among those voices was Alexander Hamilton:

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