Especially as the anticipated crowds haven't been lining
up around the block to get in, despite a vigorous promotion
campaign that includes ads, which to my eye, seem a wee bit
misleading. In his Times review, Rothstein wrote that "By
Society standards, the show, which will run through February,
is a blockbuster...," clearly referring to monies laid
out, not visits received (it hadn't yet opened) or quality
(of which he was critical). The PR people then extracted the
single word "Blockbuster"and re-nested it in e.g.
New York Review of Books copy, conveying a degree of approbation
somewhat out of synch with Rothstein's commentary.
Even by "Society standards" of turnout, the Hamilton
show, so far, hasn't measured up to past performance. From
what I've seen - and my guesstimates may be off - daily attendance
appears to run from 200-300 on weekdays, and 600-800 on weekends.
Assuming a weekly turnout of 2800 (4 weekdays at 300, 2 weekend
days at 800), that comes to 11,200 a month, or 67,200 visitors
over its six month run. That's about the rate the lynching
show achieved in 2000 and considerably less than the September
11th show drew in 2002, in neither case with remotely like
the same outlay for publicity.
Even if not a blockbuster by Met or Natural History standards,
it's heartening to see substantial numbers attending a history
exhibit, and I hope the N-YHS continues to invest in building
audience. Though maybe it would be worth exploring in advance
whether or not a particular topic has public appeal. "We
are financial people," Gilder has said, "and we
have a nose for what the market wants,'' but their nose having
proved a bit sniffly, perhaps it's time to give market research
a shot?
-7-
So, why didn't they do a better job? Why the faux-presentism?
Why the bowdlerized history? Why the heroization? Are the
promoters' politics responsible?
At first blush, I'd have to say "No," on grounds
of a massive disconnect between the politics of Alexander
Hamilton and the politics of Messrs. Gilder and Lehrman. To
measure that gulf, we need to be more specific about their
proclivities and activities, as the label "conservative
Republicans" doesn't quite do them justice. Lehrman's
stance on public issues is reasonably well known from his
failed 1982 gubernatorial campaign, but some background on
Gilder's positions might be helpful.
In a 1995 interview with the National Journal, Gilder, already
a highly successful stockbroker, described having led his
clients into the market during the late 1970s in anticipation
of a capital gains tax cut. When it came, the market surged,
convincing Gilder that lower taxes meant a better environment
for investing. This was exactly the supply-side gospel being
hammered out in those years by people like Lehrman, Arthur
Laffer, Jack Kemp, Steve Forbes and Jude Wanniski, of whose
1978 manifesto (The Way the World Works) Forbes wrote, it
"could do for the Republican Party what Marx's manifesto
did for communism."
Wanniski recalls Gilder calling him up one day in 1979 saying,
"You don't know me, but I'm a money manager in Manhattan
and I've been making a lot of money off your ideas. What can
I do to help?" With Wanniski's guidance, Gilder went
on to form the Political Club for Growth, a group of Wall
Street moneymen who funneled aid to supply-side politicians
in the 1980s, pooling their contributions to increase their
influence. When Reagan lowered capital-gains rates once again,
Gilder's fortune was driven to further heights - a happy conjunction
of principle and interest.
Gilder helped underwrite Newt Gingrich's revolution, and
is credited with being among the top ten monetary backers
of Newt's Capitol Hill career - though he was not an uncritical
supporter. When Clinton's Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin
got Republicans to agree to limit a new capital gains tax
cut to investments held longer than eighteen months - thus
favoring long-term investors over quick-turnover speculators
- some called Newt a traitor and bayed for his ouster. Gilder
disgustedly (but one assumes drolly) remarked: "I don't
know why we are Republicans. I am going to quit the Republican
Party and join the Communist Party and really have a revolution."
On reflection, he instead twice backed flat-taxer Forbes
for president. And in 1999 he founded the Club for Growth,
an even more potent engine for marshaling big money behind
candidates pledged to eliminate inheritance and capital gains
taxes, slash government entitlement programs (prescription
drugs are a current bête noir), and privatize Social
Security (which by some estimates could pump $6 billion of
public retirement funds into the investment markets each month).
The Club also targets for electoral defeat those they call
RINOs-Republicans in Name Only-in an effort to drag the party
to the right. They did brilliantly in the 2004 elections,
and reaped an instant reward in Bush's post-victory promise
to push ahead on their financial agenda.10
Why would anti-taxers and free-marketeers like these wish
to elevate Hamilton to Herohood? A man who fought for, won,
and vigorously exercised the right to tax (and was himself
at one point a tax collector!). A man committed to Big Government
(a mercantilist, not a Smithian) who favored state-sponsored
economic development. A man who approved of (as Arthur Schlesinger
has noted) "government regulation and control."
A man hailed by such Progressive (a.k.a. Liberal) Republicans
believers in activist government as Theodore Roosevelt, arguably
the ur-RINO.11
And a man hated by many traditional conservatives and libertarians
for his centralizing initiatives and emphasis on money-making:
Russell Kirk once said that only rightwingers in "whom
the acquisitive instinct is confounded with the conservative
tendency" were fascinated by Hamilton.
PREVIOUS
PAGE | NEXT
PAGE
