When a young and somewhat naive James Madison wrote the first draft of our Constitution, he believed that a meeting of 100 White males from 13 different states would be such an incredibly diverse group that Congress would not divide into competing political parties. Instead, each educated and elite White man would think for himself, be open to compromise and help govern in a reasonable way. The Constitutional Convention soon worked like that and became a startling success.
Alexander Hamilton was more realistic. He believed that if you got 100 representatives together in a hall, a shrewd authoritarian could quickly form 51 of them into a majority party, take absolute power and, Hamilton hoped, turn us into a workable dictatorship. Hamilton began this process by creating the Federalist Party. (I’ve heard that Hamilton’s goal of creating a dictatorship was accidentally omitted from the current Broadway musical.)
Hamilton’s particularly gross descendent today is a woman-grabbing traitor named Donald Trump. My point is that Trump is not an unusual President, except for his coarse stupidity. Trump has the same goals as a dozen predecessors.
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