Apropos of our democracy, Alexander Hamilton's and Thomas Jefferson's statues stand miles apart here.
America always has been at odds with these two Founders' philosophies of where the nation's exceptionalism would be found.
Today we are in the midst of a cultural U-turn away from a Hamiltonian meritocratic-elitist, centralized-power society to a more Jeffersonian Main Street focus, with state and local governments as the primary powerbrokers.
"When the country feels as though we have pushed too far in one direction, it swings back to the other side," says Dr. Lara Brown, author of "Jockeying for the American Presidency."
Prone to rambling, his clothes slightly worn, Jefferson was creative; his prose was almost poetic, his delivery scattered. The author of the Declaration, his vision of America was of a decentralized federal government, with power spread out to state and local governments.
