“The intellectual spoilsport among the founding fathers, Hamilton never believed in the perfectibility of human nature and regularly violated what became the first commandment of American politics: thou shalt always be optimistic when addressing the electorate. He shrank from the campaign rhetoric that flattered Americans as the most wonderful, enlightened people on earth and denied that they had anything to learn from European societies. He was incapable of the resolutely uplifting themes that were to become mandatory in American politics. The first great skeptic of American exceptionalism, he refused to believe that the country was exempt from the sober lessons of history. Where Hamilton looked at the world through a dark filter and had a better sense of human limitations, Jefferson viewed the world through a rose-colored prism and had a better sense of human potentialities. Both Hamilton and Jefferson believed in democracy, but Hamilton tended to be more suspicious of the governed and Jefferson of the governors. A strange blend of dreamy idealist and manipulative politician, Jefferson was a virtuoso of the sunny phrases and hopeful themes that became staples of American politics. He continually paid homage to the wisdom of the masses. Before the 1800 election, Federalist Harrison Gray Otis saw Jefferson’s approach as “a very sweet smelling incense which flattery offers to vanity and folly at the shrine of falsehood.”52 John Quincy Adams also explained Jefferson’s presidential triumph by saying that he had been “pimping to the popular passions.”53 To Jefferson we owe the self-congratulatory language of Fourth of July oratory, the evangelical conviction that America serves as a beacon to all humanity. Chernow, Ron. Alexander Hamilton (p. 628). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. Chernow, Ron. Alexander Hamilton (p. 628). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. Chernow, Ron. Alexander Hamilton (p. 628). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. ”
