By BERRY CRAIG
AFT Local 1360
The presidential election of 1800 ended up a tie between Thomas Jefferson and his running mate, Aaron Burr.
Yep, that’s right. Back then, the candidate who got the most electoral votes was president, and the second place finisher was vice president. Jefferson and Burr got 73 apiece.
Jefferson and Burr were Democratic Republicans. They beat President John Adams and his running mate C.C. Pinckney. They were Federalists.
Under the constitution, the House had to decide the winner. The House was still Federalist. The new Democratic Republican Congress had yet to be sworn in.
The House dallied until Alexander Hamilton, one of the country’s top Federalists, stepped in.
He urged Federalist lawmakers to support Jefferson. Hamilton was not a Jefferson fan. They disagreed on almost everything.
But Hamilton considered Jefferson principled and qualified to be president. He viewed Burr as a scoundrel.
Here’s an excerpt from a letter Hamilton wrote to a Federalist congressman (struck means marked out.):
"Mr. Jefferson, though too revolutionary in his notions, is yet a lover of liberty and will be desirous of something like orderly Government – Mr. Burr loves nothing but himself – thinks of nothing but his own aggrandizement – and will be content with nothing short of permanent power [struck: and] in his own hands – No compact, that he should make with any [struck: other] passion in his [struck: own] breast except [struck: his] Ambition, could be relied upon by himself – How then should we be able to rely upon any agreement with him?”
Thanks to Hamilton, the House made Jefferson president. In 1804, Burr shot Hamilton in the most famous American duel. The affair of honor was fought over Hamilton's denouncing Burr when he ran for governor of New York.
So Burr, according to Hamilton, was a narcissist driven by selfishness and a craving for personal power. He was unqualified to be president.
Some Republicans, notably Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP hopeful, have spurned Donald Trump on similar grounds.
They want nothing to do with Trump, whose words and deeds have shown him to be racist, sexist, misogynist and nativist. His fans include an official Ku Klux Klan newspaper; Louisiana Republican senate candidate David Duke, an ex-KKK bigwig who is still an ardent anti-Semite, Nazi sympathizer and white supremacist; and assorted other neo-Nazi, white supremacist and white nationalist groups.
Okay, Trump says he disavows their support. But I wish some reporter would ask him why he thinks these hate mongers are so gung-ho for him?
Anyway, Sen. Mitch McConnell is still aboard the Trump train. "We need a new president, Donald Trump, to be the most powerful Republican in America," he said last week.
Sen. McConnell, you’re no Alexander Hamilton.