Feuding Fathers?

The great historian Thomas Fleming stopped by the UCC campus in Cranford last night. He was the keynote speaker in a day-long celebration of the college's founding in 1933. His message could not have been more timely.

Are you fed up with the bitter attacks that substitute for legitimate debate in today's political campaigns? Are you turned off by the politics of personal destruction? Do you yearn for the days with giants walked the land, when revered leaders engaged each other in civil debate and elevated discourse?

Tom Fleming has news for you: If you think it's bad now, take a peek back at the nation's founding. Those folks really didn't like each other, and they weren't afraid to say so.

OK, maybe Thomas Jefferson was just a tad afraid of openly criticizing George Washington. (Who wouldn't be -- the man on the dollar bill was over six feet tall at a time when most American males were built like New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg.) But Jefferson's allies gleefully assailed Washington's politics and character, especially during the first president's second term. Fleming noted that Jefferson himself wrote a nasty private letter accusing Washington of being too cozy with the British in the waning years of his presidency. Somehow the letter wound up in the newspapers. Washington never spoke to Jefferson again.

Fleming's talk focused on the truly bitter divide between Washington and Jefferson that began during the American Revolution and continued until Washington's death in 1799. The two men disagreed profoundly on a number of vital issues. Washington favored a strong central government. Jefferson believed less was more. Jefferson was entranced by the French Revolution. Washington saw it as bloody anarchy.

So far, so good. Even the founders were allowed to disagree on highly contested issues, right?

But Fleming showed how personal these disagreements became during the nation's infancy. Even Martha Washington got into the act, professing her absolute contempt for Jefferson. Fleming quoted the first First Lady recalling the two worst days of her life. The first was when George died. The second was when Thomas Jefferson visited her to pay his condolences.

Ouch.

So maybe all the shouting on cable television, in the halls of Congress, and on the streets isn't so bad after all. In fact, it's downright American!