the guy who shifted the federalist votes away from burr and towards jefferson? hamilton tried, like, as hard as he possibly could to do that. and for many years the accepted wisdom in american history was that hamilton's the guy who won the election for jefferson. as people in the last 20 years have gone back over the record, this story doesn't hold. he wasn't in washington, he wrote a bunch of letters against burr two, three months before the house of representatives voted. and after they got his letters, all the federalists voted for burr. they didn't pay any attention to hamilton. and when they finally broke, it was much more this response to burr's own remark and to the fact that they had this terrible stalemate crisis. so i think although i remember learning that as a kid myself, i don't think it's true. it's one of those myths we're trying to get out from under. so thank you very much. [applause] >> gibbs was a very shy, shy child, spending time tinkering and doodling at his parents house. his father wanted to be a lawyer. well, his senior year of harvard, calamity

slow scholarship works for all the presidential papers, as we have been franklin and yale and jefferson hamiltonat columbia. it's still going on. they are going through each piece of paper ever wrote on. claude was a trend scriber who basically sat in a corner and listed in the book as being a part of the team. but at some point after reading all of this stuff she realized she had different opinions about them franklin as he started to write books and she wrote these great books. in fact almost everyone in the room i that you will tell you that ben franklin was a great womanizer and had an insatiable appetite and wasted half a year in france instead of getting money for the revolution so playing chess with the naked women in bathtubs sets the story here. that was true. but they make a really compelling case of that interpretation by a bunch of men. he was kind of adobe guy around women so a lot of that has been interpreted as kind of his rapaciousness. but anyway, she began a great scholar it is a self invented a scholar. one of our great franklin scholars. anyway, i come to that at the end beca

jefferson. why do you think that hamilton has kind of been not considered as one of the founding fathers or at least appearing in the current debate? >> so the question is why does thomas jefferson feature more prominently when people cite the founding fathers than alexander hamilton. um, well, i think that's entirely by design. i think people -- you cite who you want to cite. and by the way, we have some good words to say about jefferson here and in our other book about his rather more skeptical attitude towards the banks. but on public finance hamilton had the answer. jefferson, when he became president, hired his own secretary of the treasury, albert galliton, and told him to dismantle hamilton's system. he eventually refused to do this. galveston said, no, this is a sensible system. you can manage it with different levels of government spending, and there remains debate to this day. but as being able to fund the debt, fund the government in an emergency with debt issues and then bringing that debt down gradually and backing the entire scheme with central government revenue, that was a brilliant

. >> rose: more briment yrnt -- brilliant that jefferson, hamilton, franklin. >> not that franklin. >> rose: not than frank lynn. >> but certainly than the other politicians. he was totally without, in a way he couldn't tell lies. he understood why people did things, motivations. and he expressed himself beautifully. and he is the one you go to if you want to find out really what happened in the election of 1800 when jefferson came to power. and he arranged it for him. that's where he was interesting. >> rose: if the dual had never taken place, would america have been different? >> no. >> rose: if hamilton had lived. >> hamilton was totally finished by the time of the dual. he was totally discredited. he tried to overthrow adams who is the head of the republican party as it was then called. and he wanted to be president but he never could be. and he was looking for a throne in mexico like burr. they wanted-- napolitan-- that pollian bonaparte unhinged all of these guys, all about 5 foot 4 just like that pollian. and these two little guys who are done in politically in america, vice pr

the debate between jefferson and hamilton about whether it should be central government or small country of farmer republics. this question of what our original history is has shaped almost every aspect of the american experience. in other words, history is all around us. whether or not it is an accurate description of what happened in 1776 for example or what happened in 1865 is secondary to the point that people's ideas about the past, people's sense of memory about the past shape their own sense of identity and how they imagine the world should be. and therefore in my opinion history is the building block of all knowledge in our society and it is the most important part of the most significant tradition that human beings have which is story telling. >> but how do we know to trust the past? or which part of the past to trust? because as you say history is story telling and we all tend to reach for the facts that confirm our story, confirm our narrative, our interpretation of the past. how do we learn to trust which part of the past? >> professional histor yns will be the first to admit

jefferson. they're not hamilton, they're not fdr, they're not lincoln. >> oh, yes. our heroes are lincoln. our party was born with lincoln's emancipation proclamation. the fact of the matter is if you hadn't had the judiciary supreme court established by that constitution to adjudicate and make the rulings to make sure that we were in compliance with the constitution, many of those fights would have been lost. so that separation of powers, those checks and balances that are being eroded today as an irresponsible congress year in and year in and year out have been created in imperial presidency that's scaring the devil out of the american people, it's appropriate for us to call upon office holders at the federal level to get back in compliance with those separations of powers that are reflected in that great genius of the constitution which has so much comfort we were born free and will stay free. >> we agree too much presidential powers to start wars and getting involved overseas when we should stay here. thank you. we'll have you back many times. >>> when we return

obviously, jefferson at uva. hamilton at columbia and that stuff. the yale one is still going on since the 50s going through each paper that franklin wrote on. claude ann was a transcriber who sat in the corner, ignored for 20 years, not listed in the books as being part of the team, but after 20 years, she realized she had different opinions about him than all the fancy historians, and she wrote great books. everyone in the room, i could guess, will tell you ben franklin was a great womanizer, a sexual appetite, and basically wasted half a year in france instead of getting money for the revolution sort of, you know, playing chess with naked women in bathtubs. that's the story you always hear. that was true. [laughter] claude makes a compelling case that that's all over interpretation by a bunch of men. ben was kind of a dopey guy around women so a lot of that is interpreted as kind of his repatienceness. she became a great scholar, a self-invented scholar, one of our great franklin scholars. i come to that at the end because there's a number of ima

hamilton was anti-racist. madison went along with jefferson, monroe went along with jefferson. so you see the regial divide is, i think, very marked. very marked. >> do you ave ny acknowledges as to why you got into this busine in the first place? >> no, i don't, really. >> how about your own family, what was it like? >> well, i was brought up in ireland. when we discussed politics at all, it was ireland politics we were discussing. i didn't get into international politics until middle life when i worked into the united nations. >> how did you get into that? >> how did i get into that? i suppose -- well, i was in the irish department of foreign affairs and when ireand was joined with the u.n., ireland didn't join theu.n. immediately because ireland was neutral during the war. neutral kept out by the soviets, basically, but when we we l in in the 1950's, i bassy in paris and i was of brought back to be head of a new u.n. division. in that capacity, i went out very often to the u.n. general assembly. the then secretary generagot to know me. when the congo crisis broke out in the

so he had a -- jefferson had a big fight with hamilton and madison. they were kind of hobcy.ery seriously the pursuit of happiness in the constitution and the government's not supposed to get in the way of doing it. like when bill clinton became a republican and ended welfare as we know it, that's kind of a lost story. >> if ryan -- >> let me finish my thought, i'm sorry, chris. you want people to pull themselves by their bootstraps but outtheir bootstraps. you want them to get off well care and go on work. excuse me for interrupting you but i get worked up. >> there that's the point. the yiedology of individual achievement stands. the question is how is that vision that they say they adhere to of individual achievement and individual liberty applied to the ed fast of the welfare state and the answer has been in a total messy contradictory way. >> but i think it's only messy and contradictory if you assume that the political arm and the conservative movement are going to be speaking with the same voice. i mean part of the reason that ryan is so useful, i think, is he can go o

that used to make sure wednesday it was hamilton versus jefferson.receiving a government check. >> in their minds live in an empty place, in their minds they have -- they're independent, they don't need government and they disassociate themselves from anything that says that they are in fact dependent on government for a lot of things in their lives. >> as long as we're talking about ted cruz, let's speak to someone who endorsed ted cruz in his senate campaign, senator tom coburn of oklahoma who joins us now, senator, tell us a little bit about him. >> good morning. a real person. mild-mannered, very smart. actually gets it. you know, i was amazed with your all's conversation. i don't think you all get it. the tea party -- >> i beg your pardon. >> in the tea party, the tea party is every person in america who really is fed up with washington and recognizes the way we got there was abandoning the core principles of the -- of our country but also abandoning the constitution. i don't know one tea party leader anywhere that wants to eliminate veterans be

here, which i say, goes back to george washington's first cabinet, you know, alexander hamilton versus thomas jeffersoni think the difference here is that both candidates feel a little bit hemmed in, right. obviously obama has to make this argument that he'd be more natural maybe making the argument i'm going to help the middle class, help people that don't have much money, but having been in office already he has to make sort of the opposite argument, things aren't that bad he has to say. things are sort of getting better. that's an argument that kind of cuts against who he is a little bit as a politician. >> right. >> but okay, go ahead, john heilemann. >> i just want to think about -- i mean, to go back to this, the question joe was getting at a second ago, do you think that -- this debate we had over you didn't build that and whether it was in context or not in context, does seem joe's right, it does illustrate something deeper. does that seem right now? >> sure. it certainly -- there's a sense that the two emphasize different things. they're both saying what i consider to be truisms, yes, of cours

going back then and in seventy nine three hamilton presented his eleven point plan for american manufacturers prefaced by a long rant about his debate with jefferson about whether we're going to be in a very in society but you know it was basically this program of of trade policies the that gave benefits to important industries that put tariffs on particular products to the point that one hundred percent of the funding for the federal government from the terror from until the civil war hundred percent two thirds into world war one one third until world war two when did so we've always been a protectionist nation we built this nation on protectionism how and when did it become dirty. it's very interesting i mean you asked how we got to where we are right now so on top of all of those constraints and regulation the other thing that that do is actually relate to investment and they make it much easier to move investment offshore so a big part of how we became a free trade nation is when the really big manufacturing companies realize they could make a bigger profit if they were producing with cheap wage offshore now if you're going to want to relocate

jefferson of being the soften a virginia squall and a mulatto. this has been going on for 212 years. >> i'm hearing you. my producer and i was remembering but alexander hamiltondates didn't highlight their opponents shortcomings, do you think we in the the media are doing an adequate job of this? >> i'm not a media basher. you do it and i do it. we followed be-and-a-halftive set out by each campaign. we dould a heck of a lot better job praying attention to the nanny, you're being unfair and mean and more attention on what exactly are the two medicaid and medicare programs as each campaign has developed them. i think the media tries to do the job. i think that we get caught up in the kind of exciting, interesting and largely irrelevant name calling that's the modern political campaign. >>> quick heads for all of you. i am going to tampa. republicans are holding their national convention there. that kicks off august 27th. we'll be doing the show all week long in tampa. >>> police say a man handcuffed shot himself in the head sitting in the back of a police car. there's a new video that shows police, you see this officer reenacting how this could have happened,

the constitutional convention in this country, alexander hamilton, john jay, madison, they are working on the federalist papers. thomas jeffersons sitting in the back of the room tweeting. [laughter] this was an incredible exercise. i went back and thought about this. what about john and abigail adams, the incredible letters that they wrote to each other. on march 31, 1776, abigail adams wrote "remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. if particular care and attention and not paid to the ladies, we're determined to rebellion and we will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation." that was in 140 characters. [applause] >> no problem. she could have put it on her facebook. >> if we think about the kind of communication we have had through the ages that is enshrined and has held up. but the library and see shakespeare's original works. i worry about communication that is so temperate, gone. >> they would have been a lot shorter, i suppose, but it would have been a much broader conversation, theoretically one that did not just include the leak appeared that the average -- include the e