An easy trick for pundits looking to generate content is to ask, “What would the Founders think of so and so?” The giants of the American Founding—Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Jay, and so on—commented upon such a vast array of subjects that it is but a small matter to find a line that happens to reinforce a preconceived notion, and . . . voila . . . the daily quota for content has been met!
It is much harder to think seriously about the Founding vision, how it applies to modern politics, and what it can teach us (in both its own failings and how we may fall short). Stephen Knott has managed this much more difficult task in his wonderful new book, The Lost Soul of the American Presidency. Specifically, Knott identifies the Hamiltonian ideal of the presidency and how it has been corrupted in the succeeding centuries by demagoguery.
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