“Wowee, don’t worry, THIS time murdering international trade will help the US economy, pinky swear!” - the US every ~40 years or so since

Jefferson was a ridiculous president. I feel like that was a pretty hot take until Hamilton came out and really showed him to a “t” to a wider audience. I always got flak in my history classes and college courses for pointing this out, but nobody seemed to listen until they’d watched the musical lol.

Don’t get me wrong, I respect his ideas and writing, but he was quite cowardly and wrong about a great many things throughout the founding and early years of the US, even by standards of the time. I would consider him an effective revolutionary, but not an effective leader or administrator. Certainly not pragmatic.