581 | Jeffrey Rosen: Hamilton vs. Jefferson and the Battle Over Government Power in 21st Century America

The Realignment

Technology, News Commentary, National Security, Marshall Kosloff, International Relations, News, Public Policy, Economics, Politics, Saager Enjeti, U.s. Politics, Policy

4.8 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 7 November 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jeffrey Rosen, President of the National Constitution Center and author of The Pursuit of Liberty: How Hamilton vs. Jefferson Ignited the Lasting Battle Over Power in America, returns to The Realignment. Marshall and Jeffrey discuss how debates over Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson's ideas about the power of government has shaped America's political debates since the 18th century, whether our struggle to make government work effectively to accomplish its goals results from too much Jeffersonianism, why political philosophy isn't just an academic interest, and how Presidents Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump's project of attacking the administrative state and the government power will stand the test of time.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Marshall here, welcome back to the realignment.
0:03.3	Earlier this year, mine a Scannon colleague Mark Dunkelman published Why Nothing Works,
0:07.9	who killed progress and how to bring it back.
0:10.3	One Nothing Works is the perfect companion book to abundance because it tells the story of why it feels
0:14.6	like we can't build and government can't work through the lens of the idea that 20th century
0:20.3	plus American liberalism is torn between
0:22.5	two competing instincts, one Hamiltonian and one Jeffersonian.
0:27.1	On the Hamiltonian side, we want to electrify the Texas whole country and build the Tennessee
0:32.4	Valley Authority during the New Deal.
0:34.4	On the Jeffersonian side, we want to protect local communities from getting
0:37.9	bulldozed by Robert Moses imposing his vision of New York without their input. In Mark's telling,
0:44.3	we are now unable to do good and build big things like the TVA because we leaned too hard
0:51.3	into Jeffersonian ideas in the 1970s after we looked at the wreckage
0:55.6	left by the Hamiltonian 30s through 1960s.
0:59.0	Solving today's problems requires finding a balance between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander
1:04.2	Hamilton's visions.
1:05.9	So I was excited to see that Jeffrey Rosen, previous guest, president of the National Constitution Center,
1:11.7	has a new book out, The Pursuit of Liberty, how Hamilton versus Jefferson ignited the lasting
1:17.0	battle over power in America.
1:19.2	Our conversation gave me the chance to dive deeper into how Hamilton versus Jefferson and
1:23.7	their dynamic has shaped American history and how we can influence today's policy debates
1:29.3	by keeping this perspective overpower in mind. Jeffrey Rosen, welcome back to the realignment.
	...

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