Willy Walker:
Good afternoon and welcome to another Walker Webcast. It is my great pleasure to have my friend Jeffrey Rosen join me again to talk about the founding documents of our nation, particularly in light of our country celebrating its 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in a little over a week's time.
Jeff, it's great to have you back with me, and thank you so much for joining me.
Jeffrey Rosen:
Great to be with you and happy 250th.
Willy Walker:
Yeah, it's exciting. Jeff, let me do a quick intro to make people understand exactly how knowledgeable you are on the topics that you and I are going to dive into. And then we will go from there.
Jeffrey Rosen is a constitutional scholar, and I would say scholar par excellence, author and legal commentator. He is CEO emeritus of the National Constitution Center, a professor of law at the George Washington University Law School, and a contributing editor at The Atlantic. He previously served as legal affairs editor of The New Republic and a staff writer for The New Yorker. Rosen is known for making constitutional history and legal debate accessible to broad public audiences. At the National Constitution Center, he helped build a nonpartisan constitutional education program, including the interactive Constitution, which brings together leading conservative and liberal scholars to discuss areas of agreement and disagreement about each clause of the Constitution.
His newest book, The Pursuit of Liberty: How Hamilton versus Jefferson Ignited the Lasting Battle over Power in America, was published in October of 2025 and explores how the competing visions of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson continue to shape debate over liberty, executive power, federal authority, and the role of government. Jeffrey has a B.A. from Harvard University, a B.A. from the University of Oxford, and a J.D. from Yale Law School.
Jeff, last time you and I spoke, we spoke about the pursuit of happiness and how the classical writers influenced the Founding Fathers. And I found that conversation to be just incredibly insightful. And it was such an amazing research project that you did during COVID, which, by the way, I want to touch upon the habits that you picked up during COVID, and I want to find out whether you're still doing your — I'll ask you right at the top. Are you still doing your read-first habit every day, Jeffrey, of waking up and reading something printed, a book or the paper, before you go to your iPhone?
Jeffrey Rosen:
Great question. And the basic answer is yes. The flesh is weak, and I've occasionally fallen off the wagon. But just to share with listeners, that was the biggest takeaway from that. What appears in retrospect to be a completely crazy COVID reading project where I spent a whole year getting up two hours before dawn and reading classical moral philosophy and watching the sunrise and writing sonnets. I still can't believe I did it.
But the takeaway was a new rule that when I wake up in the morning, I have to read before I'm allowed to browse or surf, and I read on the Kindle. It's just a question of having the strength to swipe left to the Kindle and not right to the blogs or email. And that habit has really, more than anything else, changed my life. It's what allowed me to write this Hamilton Jefferson book in less than two years. And I'm now writing the third book in the Founders Trilogy, as it's going to be called, which will be on the pursuit of union. But just to become a kind of evangelist for the power of daily reading, I've fallen out of that habit because I'm a screen addict. And just having a rule is really helpful. And mostly now that I've become a reading evangelist, I feel so embarrassed when I don't do my morning reading that that's basically good enough to get me to be disciplined every morning. It's a wonderful habit, and I recommend it.
Willy Walker:
Do you still wake up as early as you did during the pandemic?
Jeffrey Rosen:
No, totally not. I don't want to suggest I'm some kind of freak who's getting up two hours before dawn now. That was a special and unusual project. But I still try to catch the sunrise when I can because it's so beautiful. And whether I do or not, I've got to read for at least a half hour, if not an hour, before I'm allowed to go back to the screens.
Willy Walker:
I want to spend most of our time talking about The Pursuit of Liberty, because I think that your framing of Hamilton versus Jefferson is so insightful to our country and the push-pull of our politics today. But before we dive into that, I'm curious about the Declaration of Independence that we are celebrating on the 4th. Have we been true to the Declaration of Independence, Jeff, since it was signed 250 years ago?
Jeffrey Rosen:
From the very beginning, we've been falling short, but aspiring to do better. It's remarkable that really as early as 1777, a year after the declaration was passed, a free African-American called Prince Hall wrote to Jefferson and said, you're falling short of your own ideals. Why aren't I included in the people? And ever since then, excluded groups—African-Americans, women, immigrants, young people, gay and lesbian people have insisted that they, too, are part of the one people, as Jefferson put it in the Declaration, who are created equal and are entitled to the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But it's the fact that the Declaration has provided a lodestar, a north star, that the keystone of the arch of our government, to use a metaphor that Jefferson used in another context, is what defines the American idea. The American creed. America is a creedal nation. We're defined by our belief in the three big ideas of the Declaration: liberty, equality, and government by consent. And although by definition we've fallen short from the beginning because it's impossible fully to actualize and live up to those ideals, it's the fact that we've pursued the ideals that's defined us as a nation. And that is something that is worth celebrating 250 years later.
Willy Walker:
But you say very clearly there, government by consent. Do we really today have consent over our government?
Jeffrey Rosen:
Well, that's an excellent and profound question. The idea of government by consent comes, and I've been tracing it back. The earliest expressions of it were during the English Civil War from the Levellers and the great Puritan poet John Milton. I hadn't realized that, in addition to writing Paradise Lost and being perhaps the most beautiful writer of English prose and poetry since Shakespeare, Milton wrote revolutionary pamphlets arguing that the authority of the king was only legitimate to the degree that the people consented to be part of the government. And it was Milton who insisted that the people could always withdraw their consent if the government became tyrannical or oppressive. John Locke, channeling Milton in his Second Treatise of Government, famously said that whenever government breaks the social contract, people have a right of revolution, have a right to alter and abolish government. George Mason expressed that sentiment very clearly in the Virginia Bill of Rights. And the great James Wilson of Pennsylvania, who was the most democratic founder and the real innovator who came up with the idea that we, the people of the United States as a whole, are sovereign as opposed to the parliament or the king. It was Wilson who wrote a pamphlet that Jefferson also relied on that said that government is only legitimate to the degree that it has the consent of the people.
Now we understand what Jefferson meant when he first declared those unalienable rights. He says that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the government. And then he says, and whenever the government becomes destructive of these rights, it's the right and duty of the people to alter and abolish it and establish a government more conducive to their safety and happiness. In other words, the right of revolution, as Wilson called it, is itself an unalienable right. I can't give the government the power to stop me from dissenting or even withdrawing my consent because consent by definition has to be ongoing in the sovereign power. Once, we the people, change our minds and believe the government is no longer legitimate, either we can pass constitutional amendments or else, in extreme circumstances, we have a right of revolution.
Is the government today based on consent? You know, it's a complicated question. What exactly does consent require? Ongoing majority support in polls? No. The idea of the Constitution is that we express our consent during special moments of constitutional ratification. The Constitution itself is supreme law, more supreme than an ordinary law passed by Congress, because it was ratified by a special process where people were elected to special conventions and debated thoughtfully over time and made clear that they viewed it had the status of higher law.
Now, in an age when the Constitution is really hard to amend, when compromises—the Constitutional Convention in particular, the famous compromise giving small states two votes in the Senate, as well as other peculiarities like the Electoral College—all mean that it's possible for Congress and the president to rule in some circumstances without majority consent, raises important questions about what consent requires. However, our Constitution is supreme law. It says that the way we can change it is by amendment and special constitutional convention. In that sense, to the degree that we're still obeying the Constitution, I think we do have to say that we live in a government by consent.
Willy Walker:
You talk about the line in the Declaration of Independence, “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it,” which is, to your point, the right per the Declaration of Independence. This is where it goes: my question of people to create a revolution. And I guess my question then would be, it's in the Declaration of Independence, not in the Constitution. Therefore, it is not law. And the real question I'm trying to get at is, did anyone who was defending themselves on January 6th go back to the Declaration of Independence and say, I had a right to attack the Capitol because I don't think that my government is representing me?
Jeffrey Rosen:
Great question. I do know that the leaders of January 6th invoked Thomas Jefferson, and in particular, an apocryphal quote attributed to Jefferson about government tyranny. I don't know if they specifically invoked the right of revolution in the Declaration. But the right of revolution is an extra-constitutional right. James Madison was confronted with the question of whether secession before the Civil War was constitutional. And Jefferson had said yes, because he thought of the Constitution as a compact among sovereign states. And he thought that any state could either nullify federal laws it disagreed with or even withdraw from the Union if it felt the Union had become tyrannical. Madison disagreed with that. He said, once we, the people of the states, form ourselves into the Union, you needed the consent of the whole United States before you could break it. You can't just unilaterally break a contract after you've gotten the benefits of it. He viewed secession as an extra-constitutional attempt at revolution. And he thought of the Union and Lincoln; he would have said, if he were alive, that Lincoln was justified in putting down secession because of his constitutional responsibilities.
Deciding when a revolution is legitimate, I guess the proof's in the pudding. It has to succeed before you can say that the right was successfully authorized. But you're absolutely right to point to this Jeffersonian strain in American politics that is pervasive. And we can, of course, talk about the ways it's expressed itself. But in its most radical forms has taken the form of insurrection, rebellion, nullification, and secession.
Willy Walker:
Final thing on the Declaration of Independence. It also says life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as you said a moment ago. Has our society, given we're now 250 years later and we're the most dominant economy in the world and the most powerful military in the world, have removed pursuit out of that and just said we have a right to life, liberty, and happiness rather than the pursuit of happiness?
Jeffrey Rosen:
Well, as you know from our last conversation, which you just moderated so incredibly well, that was one of my favorite and most meaningful discussions about the happiness book. The pursuit of happiness originally meant for the founders not feeling good but being good, not the pursuit of immediate pleasure, but the pursuit of long-term virtue. By virtue, they meant self-mastery, self-improvement, character improvement, and lifelong learning. And by definition, it had to be a pursuit rather than a destination because it was ultimately a striving for moral perfection, both personal and political. And that's why they thought that personal self-government was necessary for political self-government. And by definition, no human being can possibly achieve perfection, nor can any state.
That original meaning of happiness has so fallen out of our discourse ever since it was kind of abandoned in pop culture in the 60s that it almost seems quaint or atavistic to talk about it. We don't think of nations as striving to be virtuous, let alone individuals as having not only a right but a duty to strive to be virtuous. And we really don't think about the idea that the founders thought that the republic would fall unless the people were virtuous enough to master their base passions and factionate impulses and tend to the common good.
The whole point was to set aside your ego-based parochial interests and look to the interests of the union as a whole, to the common interest, to the public interest. All of these ideals are not really in mainstream culture anymore. And the 250th anniversary is a pretty good time to start recovering them because, as we know from history, every nation that's forgotten these ideals, the founders believed, would end up succumbing to demagogues and the mob.
Willy Walker:
So, Jeff, we sit at our 250th anniversary of the Declaration. And as I said previously, we're sort of 11 years early on talking about the Constitution, as your book does, as the setup between Hamilton and Jefferson. But we're going to go there based on the 250th of the Declaration and move into the Constitution.
I do find it is quite something to me, the number of people who think that the Constitution was ratified in concert with the Declaration of Independence and don't know that it was an 11-year process from declaring our independence to actually, if you will, setting up our government.
But as you went and researched Hamilton and Jefferson and, if you will, Hamilton being towards federal power and Jefferson being towards state power, talk about that as it relates to the construct of the Constitution and the tension that existed between the two of them at that time, with Madison really having the pen, Hamilton having his federalist ideology, Jefferson having his sort of, if you will, states' rights ideology. And in the actual document, not where we are today because we're going to talk about where we are today, but in the actual document, which one of those two somewhat conflicting ideologies sort of won from your view of the document?
Jeffrey Rosen:
Great question. And essentially, Madison won in the sense that he was the guy who was always carving out these compromises between Hamilton and Jefferson that were so complicated that at times only he could understand them. Now, the Constitutional Convention was dominated almost entirely by nationalists and federalists. The strong anti-federalist position, which believed in total state sovereignty and thought that the union should remain a compact of sovereign states rather than a union of, we, the people of the United States, was represented most significantly by Roger Sherman of Connecticut, who signed the Declaration and the Constitution. The simple cobbler from Connecticut, as the musical 1776 put it. He was the guy who insisted on the Connecticut Compromise, which said that the states would be represented with two senators, and the House would be based on population. And he and the smaller states refused to sign the document unless that compromise was made. It was something that he had proposed several years earlier during debates under the Articles themselves.
Willy Walker:
Jeff, let me just jump in for two seconds on that. That is clearly a governance issue. Was there also an economic issue at the time as it relates to how the various signatories lined up? Because the big movement here from a national standpoint was to assume the national debt.
And so, was there also the, hey, we want to stay as a state because we're not carrying that debt, and the others who wanted to push it to the federal government were the ones who were carrying the debt?
Jeffrey Rosen:
Another great question. It is true that those who argued for the assumption of the national debt included not only Hamilton, who wrote his famous report on public credit at the beginning of the Washington administration. But Gouverneur Morris, who is another hugely influential delegate who wrote a similar call for assumption of debt, and Robert Morris, the financier of the Revolution, who was the richest man in America and ended up in debtors' prison at the end of his life. It's an amazing story. There was some belief on the part of anti-federalists who were suspicious of a strong union that Massachusetts, for example, which had paid a lot and didn't have a large debt, thought that it shouldn't have to assume the debts of the southern states that had been less frugal.
But the biggest economic divide at the convention, as Madison noted, was not between big states and small states, but between enslavering states and non-enslaving states, between North and South, and all of the other most significant compromises. And here they're kind of complicated, but they're really important. The most important was called the dirty compromise. And again, it was between Connecticut and South Carolina.
Roger Sherman and John Rutledge of South Carolina came up with this deal where New England really wanted to be able to pass navigation acts to impose import and export taxes because they dominated the international shipping trade. The South didn't want that because they thought they wanted to be able to import slaves without taxation. The deal they made was that New England could get its navigation acts on the condition that the international slave trade not be banned until 1808. And that had huge consequences. Hundreds of thousands of enslaved people were imported by force into America during the 20 years when the slave trade remained open.
Every other southern state except for South Carolina and Georgia were willing to ban the international slave trade during the Constitutional Convention. They had enough enslaved people, and importing more would decrease the value of their enslaved population. But South Carolina and Georgia are big exporters of rice and indigo, and it's more labor-intensive, and they want a more enslaved population. Once again, it was just the holdout, South Carolina and Georgia; they said, we will not sign unless you protect the international slave trade until 1808, and Connecticut went along with it so they could get their navigation acts. And we have them to blame for one of the most shameful compromises over slavery in the Constitution.
Willy Walker:
Fascinating. I think a lot of people, Jeffrey, kind of forget about how hard it was to actually get the Constitution ratified. And one of the things that you point to in the book a lot is the Federalist Papers. Talk for a moment about the Federalist Papers and their role. They aren't law. They were, from my take of it, and I'm certain I'm going to mess this up, but they seem to be like the greatest PR campaign ever put together as it relates to what their purpose was in trying to get the states to ratify the Constitution, and at the end really used dramatically in New York to get New York to actually sign in as a signatory.
Talk for a moment about it because you point back to them. I guess the real question is, why do we look back at them? What do they tell us?
Jeffrey Rosen:
Great question. It was the greatest publicity campaign ever. And as you say, it was a local campaign. It was like New York NPR or PBS, basically, because things were really touch and go in New York. The reason we look at them, in addition to the fact that they're written by Madison and Hamilton and Jay, among the most brilliant of the founders, although Jay himself was not at the convention, is because what gives the Constitution the status of supreme law was not the intent of the framers in Philadelphia. It was the intent of the people in the ratifying conventions.
And that's why Madison himself said, we look to the original public meaning as it was understood in the ratifying conventions. And because the Federalist Papers were so widely read in the ratifying conventions, not only in New York, but across America, they're one good indication of how the people who ratified the document understood it. That's why they're even more important, according to Madison, than his own notes of the convention, which he didn't publish, which were not published until after his death in 1840, because he just thought they weren't relevant. That's the main reason we read the Federalist Papers. Plus, they're so clear and beautifully written. And think of Federalist 1. This is a test of whether it's possible to govern men by reason and conviction rather than force or violence. Or Madison talking about how in all large assemblies of any character composed, passion never fails to wrest the scepter from reason. Even if every Athenian had been Socrates, Athens would still have been a mob.
It's just this spectacular combination of original American political theory and brilliant political rhetoric that's unmatched in America and, in fact, in world history, which is why it's really great on the 250th to read the Federalist Papers.
Willy Walker:
You just noted, create a republic based on reason and conviction and not force or violence. I sort of underscored that in doing my research, and it’s sort of so profound. How do we ensure that we have a nation and a government that is based on reason and conviction and not force or violence?
Because it certainly feels that we're in this kind of, to our previous conversation about, quite honestly, the right to revolution. That's sort of underpinning. And at the same time, you want to continue to reach for that, a republic based on reason and conviction. Is it all about reading, or is it broader than that?
Jeffrey Rosen:
Well, ultimately, it really is all about reading. I mean, it's really remarkable how Madison, who said the main thing we have to avoid is faction, which he defined as any group, a majority or a minority, animated by passion rather than reason, devoted to self-interest rather than the public good. That's what we're trying to avoid.
And the way to avoid faction, according to Madison and all the founders, is through education. And that's why Madison is so excited about this new technology, the Broadside Press, because he thinks when people read complicated arguments like the Federalist Papers in the newspapers, they'll discuss them with their representatives. And guided by an enlightened class of journalists and statesmen he calls the literati, he thinks that reason will slowly spread across the land, and people will think to the public interest rather than to factionate self-interest.
Now, even to describe this, we're both smiling, I think, because the idea of an enlightened class of statesmen or journalists, like a kind of editorial meeting of The Atlantic or something like that, in sober conversation with the people who would read primary sources themselves and ultimately listen to competing points of view and converge on the public good seems incredibly quaint. It was even ambitious at the time because, of course, it's an intention with notions of democracy to defer to some class of experts. But in the age of social media and AI, it seems like we're living in Madison's nightmare.
Obviously, social media is one of instant communication, posts based on passion, travel faster than those based on reason. And most importantly, citizens have gotten out of the habit of reading primary texts and thinking for themselves. The real danger of social media and AI is that we're kind of liking and tweeting the opinions of our team rather than making up our own minds. And the whole system is supposed to collapse unless people take the time to listen to competing points of view and make up their own minds. Maybe worth taking another beat here on why Madison thought that freedom of conscience was the most important unalienable right, the power to think as we will and speak as we think. He says it's unalienable because the opinions of men and women, being dependent on evidence contemplated by their own minds, cannot be controlled by other men.
I can't give you the power to control my thoughts because my thoughts are the product of reason and conviction and not force or violence. A huge shift from the medieval view that we get our opinions from the king or the pope or the tyrant. Madison says we have to think for ourselves. How do we think for ourselves? We have to evaluate competing points of view. That's why he believes that freedom of speech and religion is so important. You have to have exposure even to false opinions about religion and politics so that you can make up your own mind. And that's why Jefferson, paraphrasing Milton, says that truth has nothing to fear from error as long as reason is free to combat it. This freedom of conscience is the preeminent liberty, which is also a property interest that Madison says the government is instituted to protect. It's at the foundation of the First Amendment, but it's not only a right, it's a responsibility, a duty. I have not only the right to say whatever I want, but I have a responsibility to educate myself so that I can think for myself, make wise choices, choose virtuous, public-spirited representatives, and not just succumb to demagogues and the mob again.
And remember, they thought that every previous republic had fallen because the people exchanged their liberties for cheap luxuries like Caesar would give them cheap corn and bread and circuses. And as a result, they allowed him to be a dictator. The founders in the convention are very suspicious of direct democracy, except for James Wilson, who's the great Democrat. And they devise the whole Constitution to slow down deliberation with speed bumps and roadblocks so it's hard for mobs to organize. And by the time they find each other in a big republic, they'll get tired and go home. And again, technology and social media have completely undermined all the benefits, as the founders thought, of a large extended republic by making communication instant. And when you add to that our polarization that comes from gerrymandering and political self-sorting and algorithmic radicalization, you really are living in a world that's very far from what the founders had in mind.
Willy Walker:
But double-click on that for a second. You just said that the founding fathers were sort of suspicious of direct democracy. They set up a constitutional republic. I think many people sit there and say, no, we're a pure democracy. We’ve got to be purely democratic. And what you are saying is, no, actually, they were fearful of a direct democracy, if you will. And they set this form of government up as a constitutional republic purposefully. Is that a correct read on what you just said?
Jeffrey Rosen:
That is a correct read. And by they, I mean the majority of delegates to the federal convention, most of whom were federalists and very suspicious of democracy. The main precipitant for the convention was Shays' Rebellion in Western Massachusetts, where a farmer, Daniel Shays, led a group of disaffected farmers and debtors who can't pay their debts because of inflation after the Revolutionary War. They stormed the federal armory at Springfield. And Madison and the other framers, including Hamilton, Morris, all the nationalists, are afraid that this is going to presage chaos and anarchy. The main purpose of the Constitution is to create a federal government strong enough to put down domestic and foreign insurrections. That's explicit in the Constitution. And also to discourage mobs from forming by ensuring that the people don't speak directly, but instead that their will is filtered through representatives.
Now, not everyone believed that. As I said, the big exception is James Wilson. Incidentally, there's a good new biography of James Wilson. It's about to come out next week by Jesse Wegman. Your listeners can check it out if you want to see the one guy at the convention who took seriously the idea that if we, the people, are sovereign, we should be able to rule in all aspects. He wanted a direct popular election of both the House and the Senate and the President. And he was alone in that. That was just too democratic for everyone else. Now, the views of Wilson were channeled later on by Jefferson, who himself was a great champion of democracy. And he believed that the will of the majority should always prevail. And as America became increasingly more democratic and the suffrage expanded and we amended the Constitution to allow the direct election of senators who were used to be appointed by state legislatures, the Constitution has become more like Wilson and Jefferson hoped and less like Madison and Hamilton and Gouverneur Morris hoped. But the basic design baked into the Constitution itself is a suspicion of direct democracy.
Willy Walker:
As Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton lie in their graves, which one is smiling more broadly right now in the Trump presidency? Is it Thomas Jefferson because, let's just take one issue that's been sent back to the states in a very dramatic way. Abortion rights have been sent back to the states. Or is it Alexander Hamilton who sees a federal defense budget move from, what is it, $900 billion to $1.2 trillion? Who's winning in the Trump presidency, Hamilton or Jefferson?
Jeffrey Rosen:
Well, there are elements of both, as you suggest. And ever since Theodore Roosevelt was called on to deploy Hamiltonian means for Jeffersonian ends, namely the Hamiltonian means of strong federal power to achieve the Jeffersonian ends of increasing democracy and curbing the corporations, both Republican and Democratic presidents have mixed and matched Hamilton and Jefferson. Republican presidents have tended to favor a Hamiltonian unitary executive that swelled to a kind of power that even Hamilton couldn't have imagined, along with a Jeffersonian view of congressional power, trying to chip back at the administrative state.
Whereas Democrats have tended to at least talk about doing the opposite, wanting a broad Hamiltonian view of congressional power and a more constrained executive, although once in office they tend to be pretty Hamiltonian, as President Obama and President Biden both showed. There are no pure Jeffersonian or Hamiltonian presidents, just as Hamilton and Jefferson themselves were not pure to their own principles entirely. But at the end of the book, I do ask the question: Is President Trump, should he be viewed more like Julius Caesar or Andrew Jackson? And both Hamilton and Jefferson feared a Julius Caesar-like demagogue who would court the people from below or impose force from above and consolidate all power in the presidency and undermine the separation of powers. At the same time, Jefferson was in favor of direct democracy, and Andrew Jackson, channeling the Jeffersonian tradition, used executive power to kill the Bank of the United States, to fire a lot of the federal civil service that Quincy Adams had appointed on a nonpartisan basis in a kind of doge-like purge, and to institute the spoils system. And like President Trump, Andrew Jackson attacked elites and was willing to insist that he was a direct representative of the people.
I think it's too soon as a historian to decide whether President Trump will ultimately be more in the Jacksonian tradition, which is very much part of the American story, or as a sort of Caesar-like character who is outside of what is part of the American ideal. Although it's important to note that other presidents have been attacked as Julius Caesar before, including Franklin Roosevelt, who was attacked so often as a Caesar that he dressed up like Caesar for his birthday in 1934. And there's a picture of him grinning in a toga with his wife, Eleanor, dressed as a Roman matron. And there were plausible arguments that FDR was undermining the separation of powers by trying to pack the Supreme Court and rule by executive order that he was undermining the separation of powers.
What was different about the 1930s and today is that Congress had some spine. It wasn't supine. And Democrats in Congress repudiated the court packing plan, even though they just won one of the biggest majorities ever in 1936 because they thought it would undermine judicial independence and the separation of powers. Today, Congress is basically rubber-stamping the program of any president of his own party. This isn't just Republicans and President Trump. Democrats did the same thing. Basically, with Presidents Biden and Obama and a Congress that's totally failing to exercise independent judgments, combined with a judiciary that's become very sympathetic to notions of a unitary executive power that really have dramatically exacerbated the imperial presidency, suggests that the separation of powers has been out of whack long since before President Trump got into office.
Willy Walker:
I'm interested in how you use that timeframe. In doing my research for this, I was thinking about the influence of the federal government and whether we're more Jeffersonian or Hamiltonian today. And so, I went back and looked at federal spending in 1926 as a percentage of GDP and federal spending in 2026 as a percentage of GDP. And it will be no surprise to you, Jeffrey, that it has gone from 3% of GDP in 1926 to 24% of GDP in 2026. And so just the increased growth and influence of our federal government in everything that we do in this country is unbelievable. The question I have for you, back to your comment about sort of Republicans and Democrats, and neither is sort of the party of Jefferson or the party of Hamilton, is it as much a factor of either calm times versus volatile times as it is political ideology?
Because I think you can look back and say that when we are in times of crisis, whether it's the pandemic, whether it's the great financial crisis, whether it's the dotcom blowup, those have appeared to be times where the federal government has stepped in and said, we're going to take care of everything and we're going to prop this all up. Where we get these massive expansions of not only their spending, but everything they want to take over for us. Whereas when you're in more calm times, you can actually sit there and sort of say, hold it, maybe all this shouldn't be in Washington, and it should be sent back to the states. Is that too rough of a shot? Or does that make some sense in the way that our federal government has worked?
Jeffrey Rosen:
That's a good suggestion. Ronald Reagan said that he left the Democratic Party in 1960 because it had abandoned the principles of Jefferson and limited government. Remember, FDR tried to base the entire New Deal on Jefferson's image, and he put Jefferson on the nickel and built the Jefferson Memorial.
But that was an act of chutzpah because he's expanding the size of the federal government in ways that would have made Jefferson cringe. And Reagan said that he wanted to return the Republicans of the 80s to a more Jeffersonian vision. And that government wasn't the solution. It was the problem. Now, in practice, Reagan spent so much on defense and expanded presidential power to such a degree that the deficit ballooned. And it wasn't until William Jefferson Clinton, who worshipped his namesake and took a bus from Monticello to his own inauguration. That was the last time we've had a balanced budget. Clinton's the guy who said the era of big government is over. In some ways, he was our last truly Jeffersonian president. And he did do that in times of relative calm. Your suggestion may be right. But it's also a question of priorities. And Reagan, who didn't like the administrative state, did want a strong defense budget. And that plus a recession made it impossible for him to balance the budget.
Willy Walker:
It seems so interesting as it relates to going back to Trump, the dual sides of it. He is in his first year in office, the federal government has shrunk by somewhere between 250 and 300 thousand employees, which when I asked AI to calculate that of what that is worth in annual savings, they said it was somewhere between 30 and 40 billion dollars, which is a staggering sum of money when you think about what it is from a payroll standpoint and then benefit standpoint. And yet at the same time, we can also point to the cost of our debt going up by a couple of basis points. Given the size of the debt today, it washes out any of the savings you get from the people and also are the entitlements that we have out there today are just consuming so much of our spending that no matter what you do from either a discretionary spending, tighten the belt or from the actual number of people working in the federal government, you're still just seeing spending continue to go up and up. Is there any way out of this predicament?
Jeffrey Rosen:
Well, your economics are far better than mine, and I don't pretend to understand the policy or economic solution. But it is striking that there does not seem to be a political constituency for fiscal responsibility. There's plenty of anti-tax sentiment, but people are perfectly willing to allow the government to go into debt to fund stuff they like.
In a sense, this, whatever you want to call it, tension or hypocrisy perhaps, goes back to Jefferson himself, who promises a balanced budget and limited executive power and then gets the chance to buy Louisiana and double the size of the United States for $16,000. One problem: he thinks it's unconstitutional. He briefly contemplates the possibility of asking for a constitutional amendment, then he's afraid that Napoleon might change his mind and therefore buys Louisiana, even though he thinks it's unconstitutional.
Presidents find it impossible to be true to limited government principles when they have policy ends that they think are worthy. And certainly the Louisiana purchase was a worthy policy, and it was the greatest thing that Jefferson ever did. In that sense, it's hard to see a political way out of it just because it would take such discipline both to refuse to raise taxes and also to reduce government spending.
I'll ask you because this is your department more than mine. How did Bill Clinton pull it off?
Willy Walker:
Oh, well, first of all, Newt Gingrich, as you well know, had a large hand in getting him to the table, if you will. And I do find it to be interesting, I mean, the Tea Party went from being this sort of third party to essentially being the Republican Party, which is an incredible, if you will, movement that kind of went from outside to inside. But it was the Tea Party, as you remember, that really was behind Newt Gingrich and Newt Gingrich working with Clinton to, I think, add that sort of fiscal discipline side to things.
But I think the other piece to it is we have gone through, I mean, the federal debt was 8 trillion dollars under Barack Obama. It's 32 today under Donald Trump. The growth of the federal debt just from Obama to Trump has been so out of control that, I mean, it was an issue back under Obama. But at 8 trillion dollars and particularly given the growth of GDP, we could clearly afford it. And we still today, you can do the numbers and get to the fact that if you were to do any kind of net present value on the growth and the GDP of America. If you looked at this as a business, if you looked at this as a real estate asset that I lend on, you would sit there and say there's plenty of debt service coverage capability here inside of the United States of America. And if we continue to grow GDP at 2-3% a year, we will continue to be able to afford the trillions of dollars that we're overspending on an annual basis. I don't think that's good governance. I think we ought to really be focused on it.
But I also don't think in today's world it's an existential threat to our government of being able to continue to fund itself. The question is, what are we spending the money on, and are we getting a good return for that money that we're spending? And in that one, I think that plenty of people on both sides of the aisle can look at it and say the pretty quick answer to that is no.
And I think that that is the real question that hopefully one of the two parties really focuses on as it relates to where are they spending, what are they spending on, and at the end of the day, what's the return we're getting on it?
I'll just give one quick, you asked me the question, Jeff, and I'm sorry to go on too long here. But I was in California recently and I was at a party with somebody who, from the way they were dressed and the way that they talked, I was like, this is a very liberal person that I'm assuming is a card-carrying member of the Democratic Party. And this gentleman sits there and says the amount of waste here in California just baffles me. And the way that our government raises taxes every single year and just spends it in such a poor way, I'm fed up. And I was like, wow, if this gentleman, and again, I was making my own assumptions about what his true broader beliefs are. But the way he presented himself and the way he spoke to me for the first half an hour of our conversation would lead me to believe that he would never be someone to ask that question. And I was like, if this gentleman has gotten to the end of his wits as it relates to the way the Democratic Party in California is spending its money, then maybe there is a tide that's going to turn here. But time will tell.
Jeffrey Rosen:
Absolutely fascinating.
Willy Walker:
Yeah. Let me, as we're finishing up on time, because I find all this to be so fascinating. As you think about celebrating the 250th and going back to the Constitution and trying to figure out whether we're actually what that struggle is between Hamilton and Jefferson.
One of the things inside there, Jeffrey, that you talk about is the principles of the Constitution are a commitment to a civil dialogue. And we seem to have lost that civil dialogue. And when you were running the center, you were clearly innovative and one of the true leaders in trying to create a center and a dialogue, both inside the confines of the physical center as well as outside on podcasts and speeches and all the media you put out, to create an environment where you could have a civil dialogue. Beyond the center that you ran so effectively, where are you seeing that happen? Is it on university campuses today? Charlie Kirk's assassination was horrific. But one of the things that many people who are big fans of Charlie Kirk said was that he was engaging in that dialogue. And there are plenty of people who thought that he was engaging in it a little bit too much in a partisan way. But at least he was bringing the dialogue to college campuses around the country to just talk about issues and what he was putting forth as a civil way of talking about it.
You can debate with me as long as you want. You can call me names if you want to. Don't go to violence. Let's talk about these issues. Where are you seeing that happen today that those of us who would like to see it happen more can potentially learn from what either an institution or an organization is doing to try and promulgate it?
Jeffrey Rosen:
I think it's happening all over the country if we take the time to look for it. I've just joined, as a senior fellow, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). I'm very proud to be part of America's leading defender of free speech on a nonpartisan basis.
I've started a new podcast called The Blessings of Liberty, which brings together liberals and conservatives for these sorts of civil dialogues, just as FIRE defends free expression, whether the threats come from the left or the right. And there are podcasts and town meetings and centers all over the country that are engaging in this. I've participated in virtual town meetings hosted by Republican and Democratic representatives that were just incredibly inspiring in the thoughtfulness of the discussion, the willingness of people to take an hour in the middle of the day to dig in deep about constitutional principles.
I've been very inspired by my trips around America to speak to rural bookstores in red and blue America about the principles of the Declaration and the Constitution. And people are hungry for this. There's no political valence to allegiance or love of the ideals. What we disagree about is how to balance values like liberty and power. But that disagreement is one that goes back to the beginning. Hamilton and Jefferson themselves had fundamental, deep disagreements that were also in an extraordinarily partisan time, including a time where there were threats of violence from the Whiskey Rebellion, which Hamilton and Washington put down by force all the way up to, of course, the Civil War when the Union was torn apart by violence.
Civil disagreement is not a bug in the system; it is a feature, and that's why I talk about the ideals of Hamilton and Jefferson, like golden and silver threads woven throughout American history; sometimes they cross, sometimes they pull so far apart that they're about to snap. But it's a commitment to the dialogue that we have to maintain. And that's a commitment that's being threatened in the wider culture. You can find exceptions all over the place. Many universities are starting centers for civil dialogue and are hosting really meaningful conversations. There's a real understanding that there's a threat to civil dialogue from the extreme left and the extreme right. Which is why so many universities and other non-governmental institutions are trying to bring folks together. But it's a cultural commitment to the importance of it that's key. And that has to come from citizens themselves. It goes back to what we've been talking about, about deep reading. The point of deep reading is not just to learn and grow, although it is in fact its own reward because it's so incredibly meaningful to learn. But also to expose yourself to different points of view so you can open your mind to different points of view. You might change your mind and ultimately converge on the truth.
The whole premise of the Enlightenment was that it's possible by civil dialogue and reasoned debate for people to converge on the truth. And an age where we're more tempted to get our opinions from the internet or conspiracy theories or from extreme political leaders on both sides, rather than making up our own minds, is one where we're not doing what Hamilton and Jefferson did. And that's why I end the book with that really moving image of the fact that after Hamilton dies, Jefferson places his bust across from his own in the central entrance hall of Monticello. And when he passes Hamilton's bust, Jefferson would smile faintly and say, "Opposed in life as in death.” And for Jefferson, Hamilton is not a hated enemy to be destroyed, but a respected opponent to be engaged with. And the fact that Hamilton and Jefferson, after all of their extraordinary battles, political opponents and who almost came to blows in the election of 1800, despite all that, they were able to maintain mutual respect, suggests that what we've really got to do is just resurrect that spirit of civic friendship, of political leaders who are willing to view each other as respected opponents rather than enemies.
Some of that will take institutional reform of Congress in particular, some media habits. But ultimately, it'll just come down to individual citizens making a choice to listen to podcasts like this one, to those that, whether it's the National Constitution Center or FIRE, to engage in town meetings. But most of all, just take the time to read the primary sources yourself. We live in the most incredible age in human history in some ways, because all of these sources and books and all this wisdom are basically free and online. All we need is the self-discipline to do it.
Back to my morning, the flesh is weak, and I'm tempted every single morning to check some silly blog or check email or X, but I try to just read something. = And whenever I do that, I feel whatever else happens during the day, whatever hash I make of my time or my equanimity, at least I've used my time well and learned something.
It's all up to us. It has been from the beginning. That's why Franklin said when he was asked, what have you created? A republic, if you can keep it. That's not a bromide. It's a serious responsibility to be a citizen. And it takes discipline, and it takes embracing the duty of self-education. And I know anyone who's listening to this podcast has embraced that duty, if I can use that strong word. And thank you for doing that. And thanks to you for hosting these superb conversations, which I always learn so much from. It's always just an honor to be in conversation with you.
Willy Walker:
The thanks are to you. I want to leave it there. I will insert one quick thought, which is, as you were talking about your morning read, it made me think of Admiral William H. McRaven's commencement address at the University of Texas years ago, where he said, “Get up and make your bed. Because if you make nothing else of your day, you've at least accomplished one thing.” And so along with making your bed, I would add getting up and reading something that's non-screened, well, it can be on a screen, but something that is real and not just going to the news of the day is a great habit to get into.
Jeffrey, as always, what always amazes me when I speak to you is just the amount of incredible data that you have jammed into that brain of yours. And not only that, it's in there, but your recall of it. The way you recall and the way you feed all of it or weave it all into your anecdote about it, but going to actually the words that were written and the words that were said is just a masterful skill. And so it is always a great honor for me to spend time with you. Thank you very much. And I hope to see you again soon. And happy 250th to the United States of America.
Jeffrey Rosen:
Thank you so much. Happy 250th.
Willy Walker:
Great to see you. Bye-bye.
Jeffrey Rosen:
Bye.
