ZadekpediaAlexander Hamilton appears in The Bob Zadek Show’s excerpts chiefly as a historical reference point, invoked by Bob Zadek and his guests in discussions of insider trading, judicial power, federalism and tax enforcement. The excerpts do not present a dedicated treatment of his life or thought.
The first insider trader
In the 2009 episode on insider trading, Bob Zadek asked guest Don Boudreaux who was the first insider trader in American history, offering as a hint that his picture is on the $10 bill; Boudreaux answered Alexander Hamilton Legalize Insider Trading (2009). Zadek described Hamilton as George Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury and the first to hold that office, and as “a big-government kind of guy.” He recounted that the colonies financed the American Revolution by issuing paper money called Continentals, that after the war the states held debt they could not repay, and that Hamilton planned for the federal government to buy up, honor and pay off the state debt. According to Zadek, there was opposition from the southern states, and at a dinner among Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton — which Zadek called the Great Dinner Bargain — the northern states agreed to let the nation’s capital be in the south in exchange for the southerners allowing Hamilton to buy up the script. Zadek said Hamilton told his friends to buy Continentals for pennies on a dollar, and that when Hamilton announced the federal government would guarantee them, they cashed in at 100 cents on the dollar. Boudreaux responded that the wrong in the story was not the insider trading but the bailout, and added that Hamilton’s statue stands in front of the Treasury building in Washington.
The Reynolds affair
The 2013 episode on political scandals turned to Hamilton’s affair with Maria Reynolds, which Zadek called probably the country’s first sexual scandal, dating it to 1791, when the country was three years old California Dreamin’ – About Sane Government (2013). Zadek said Hamilton, then Secretary of the Treasury, had an affair with Reynolds, who was married and whom Zadek described as having seduced him; that her husband began blackmailing Hamilton, who paid; and that in 1796 Hamilton published a long public apology including the love letters. Zadek said Hamilton maintained he had not otherwise violated the public trust, and that an accusation that he used public money to pay the blackmail was never seriously pursued. As a postscript, Zadek said Aaron Burr killed Hamilton in a duel on the cliffs of Weehawken, New Jersey, in 1803, and that Burr had been Maria Reynolds’ divorce lawyer.
The “least dangerous branch”
In the 2019 episode on the Supreme Court, Zadek introduced David Kaplan’s book The Most Dangerous Branch as a play on Hamilton’s writing in the Federalist Papers Demystifying the Supreme Court (2019). Zadek said Hamilton wrote in Federalist 78 — allowing that he could be wrong about the number — that the Supreme Court was the “least dangerous branch” because it had neither arms nor a purse, and could only say what it thought without power to enforce it. Zadek said Hamilton “knew a whole lot about a whole lot of things” but maybe got his view of the Supreme Court wrong, and that the Court has become far more powerful than the founders envisioned. Kaplan’s discussion of the Court’s power, and of the hypocrisy of liberals and conservatives who attack or embrace that power depending on who controls it, does not otherwise return to Hamilton.
Sovereignty and the Whiskey Tax
In the 2020 episode on California and sovereignty, guest Frank Buckley said that at the Framers’ Convention some people, Alexander Hamilton among them, echoed the British view that there could be only one sovereign, but that this was not the document that came out of Philadelphia in 1787, which instead embodied divided sovereignty Did California Just Declare Itself a Nation-State? (2020). In the 2022 episode on the Inflation Reduction Act, guest Thomas DiLorenzo said that after the revolution it was Hamilton who wanted to bring back armed tax collectors, citing the Whiskey Tax rebellion: a tax on whiskey, protests and refusals to pay by Western Pennsylvania farmers, and the tarring and feathering of federal tax collectors Lies, Damned Lies & the Inflation Reduction Act (2022). DiLorenzo said Hamilton talked George Washington into taking some 13,000 soldiers into Western Pennsylvania to enforce the Whiskey Tax, that it turned into a bust, and that Washington pardoned the two protesters convicted of tax evasion.
Across episodes
Four episodes touch on Hamilton — 2009 on insider trading, 2013 on political scandals, 2019 on the Supreme Court, 2020 on California sovereignty, and 2022 on the Inflation Reduction Act — and the episodes show no development in the treatment: he is cited in each for a different episode in the founding era, with no guest or host revisiting an earlier characterization.