What Tim Geithner Should Know About Alexander Hamilton

Dartmouth-educated Tim Geithner, our current Secretary of Treasury, has either forgotten or never learned the lessons from Alexander Hamilton’s first year as our inaugural Secretary of Treasury.

Hamilton is no favorite of the Tea Party movement. Indeed, it can be argued that no figure in the early years of the Republic did more to usurp the Constitution than Hamilton. He was, after all, the man who persuaded the First Congress to pass and Washington to sign the National Bank Bill that both Jefferson and Madison considered unconstitutional. He followed that up with a vainglorious show of force in the Whiskey Rebellion, and, while out of office, vigorously supported the unconstitutional Alien and Sedition Acts. And did I mention his notorious speech at the Constitutional Convention where he argued in favor of a life time appointment for the head of the Executive Branch and the members of the Senate? If ever there was an American champion of centralized federal power, it was Hamilton.

You can read the rest of this column at Broadside Books Voices of the Tea Party blog here.