Why would you deem my attempt to elucidate why I feel that Limbaugh & co. are misreading and misapplying my book some sort of out-take from the Daily Kos? It wasn’t and it isn’t. I’ve never read the Daily Kos and am not likely to do so in future.

Mr. Limbaugh & co. are distorting my book, and I have the right to say so, and I’ve had backing from colleagues who are Republicans as well as colleagues who are Democrats. That I voted for Obama has little to do with the intellectual dishonesty characterizing the use of my book.

One last note — I’ve read and enjoyed and learned a great deal from the work of historians who happen to be conservative Republicans, such as John Phillip Reid. I would hope that you might emulate that approach to scholarship and read books by people on the other side of the divide.

Now I find you’re not only an announced supporter of Barack Obama, but you call a respected member of my side of the ideological spectrum a “distortion-monger”.

Now I know I’d be reading a piece of liberal literature and patronizing a liberal author. Thank you for saving me the time of reading this book. I’ll skip.

Limbaugh is taking my account of Jefferson’s critique of Hamilton as *true* and then applying it to Obama.

However, in my book, which Limbaugh uses as authority for his post, I did NOT posit that Jefferson was right about Hamilton nor that Hamilton was right about Jefferson. Rather, I tried to give the reader a sense of the arguments pitting the two men against each other, while recognizing that each played vital roles in the origins of the new nation.

In parrticular, contrary to Limbaugh, Hamilton did *not* want “to vastly grow the federal government” — implying an expansion beyond its constitutional limits. Jefferson may have thought that way about Hamilton, but Hamilton only wanted to ensure that the federal government, given its implied powers under Article I, section 8, clause 13, could use those powers to the fullest permissible extent to achieve the objectives defined by the Constitution. To the extent that an analogy is appropriate, Obama also wants to use federal cosntitutional powers to the fullest permissible extent to achieve the objectives defined by the Constitution. Both men were/are responding to major fiscal and financial crises threatening the economy and requiring creative and vigorous use of federal power to respond to those crises and to prevent them from taking the economy down.

BUT, even as I concede one way that such a historical analogy might be plausible, I must also point out the key ways in which the proposed analogy fails. Hamilton was trying to CREATE a sound federal fiscal system and national economy, and Obama is trying to PRESERVE and RESTORE a sound federal fiscal system and national economy. That’s why I say that the difference between the two policies is like the difference between ham and microchips.

By contrast, Jefferson MISREAD Hamilton’s intentions, because in the 1790s he did NOT believe in the “implied powers” doctrine (even though he used it skillfully in the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, as shown in my book, though not without qualms about what he was doing).

At least Jefferson was sincere in his misreading of Hamilton’s intentions. By contrast, Limbaugh DELIBERATELY misreads Obama’s intentions, with malice aforethought, especially given Limbaugh’s embrace of the unconstitutional and monarchic “unitary presidency” advanced by former Vice President Cheney, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, and former Justice Department official John Yoo and embraced by former President George W. Bush — something, by the way, that Hamilton would have repudiated with scorn, as shown by his arguments in THE FEDERALIST No. 69. The “unitary presidency” brigade claims that the presidency has inherent executive powers beyond those specified in the Constitution and that the appropriate measure of those powers is the monarchic executive power of the British Crown circa 1787, which supposedly passed to the presidency under the Constitution. In THE FEDERALIST No. 69, Hamilton does a devastating comparison between the powers of the Crown (based on the account of those powers given in the Tory royalist William Blackstone’s commentaries) and the Constitution, showing the great difference between the two institutions.

In sum, Limbaugh is misrepresenting the arguments of my book and misusing them for present political advantage. My book is a biography the chief strength of which (according to the reviews it has received) is its sensitivity to historical context, which Limbaugh wouldn’t know if it bit him on the nose.

I did let a note of asperity creep into my comment, and this appendage to that comment, but, gentlemen, consider how you would react if Al Franken set out to misuse something one of you wrote to promote his political agenda. Heck, I’m no fan of Al Franken and never have been.

At least you admitted your partisan support for Obama.

Yet Limbaugh does 3 hours, less commercials & news, 5 days a week. If he got you so wrong, why not explain it?

You’re an expert. You wrote the book. Your excuse for not providing a pointed rebuttal seems thin – that it won’t fit in a sound byte? Well, an essay isn’t a sound bite. So write the essay!

One would think conservatives would naturally identify with Hamilton, not Jefferson. Hamilton being “pro-business” and everything.

But to take an historian’s interpretation of Jefferson’s criticisms of Hamilton, ignore the merits of the debate, and contextualize them to a modern failure of our regulatory system is amazing. Truly amazing.

Mr. Limbaugh’s pharmacist is to be congratulated.