This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, August 21st, 2012.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Thomas Jefferson didn't have his presidency listed on his tombstone, but he was keenly aware of how history would record it.

Rob McDonald, a professor of history of the United States Military Academy, is currently

working on a book about our third president during his time in office.

We spoke during Cato University held earlier this month.

Presidents are rated historically based upon what a group of historians think about the times they lived in, the opportunities

presented to various presidents to preside effectively, and of course George Washington always comes out on top. He's well regarded for not clinging to power, for deftly handling things without seeking to gain some sort of advantage.

But Thomas Jefferson, who as president was a very different kind of president is also right up there.

But in his own time, you're working on a book related to this subject,

what do we know about how Thomas Jefferson was viewed and what he thought of that?

Well, Jefferson was, he was loved, he was hated, he was revered, he was reviled.

Some people literally compared him to Jesus, others literally described

him as the Antichrist. In the 1790s, in the election of 1800, he was an incredibly polarizing figure.

As we've mentioned in a different recording, the authorship of the Declaration of Independence

was not known for many years after it was written and Jefferson and his proxies

used that as a defense against accusations that he was somehow un-American.

Yeah, absolutely.

During the 1790s, when Jefferson

was Secretary of State in the Washington

administration, when Hamilton was Washington

Secretary of the Treasury, they engaged in this extended debate,

...