US Presidential Election 2016: Alexander Hamilton said it had fallen to America to prove citizens capable of unselfish government that served the public good

Alexander Hamilton, Founding Father of the United States and the chief champion of its constitution. Image: Alexander Hamilton from Marion Doss (License) (Cropped)

In The Federalist No.1, arguing for the ratification of America's then brand new constitution, Alexander Hamilton wrote that:

"It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force."

Hamilton drew up an image of a grave responsibility having fallen upon America, as the symbol and example of citizen government, to prove that government by consent, by reason and by dispassionate and sound judgement was something of which ordinary people - once removed from the compulsions of force or fear or hierarchical and servial duties - were capable.

But Hamilton also warned of the prejudicial interests which the new Constitution must overcome to pursue that ideal. Not least the "perverted ambition" of those who seek to "flatter themselves with fairer prospects of elevation" or "aggrandise themselves by the confusions of their country".

Sound like anyone?

Donald Trump has, at every turn, taken the path of division and self-aggrandisement. At every turn he has taken the low road, driving wedges into the heart of the country to exploit fear, disenfranchisement and confusion.

As much as the citizens of the United States likes to see their country as something that stands apart, it has nonetheless remained on trend. The rise of the language of far right politics - sectarian, intolerant - is not unique to America. It is feeding on desperation and hopelessness wherever it can find it.

Around the world, opportunistic individuals are stoking confusion to aggrandise themselves and pursue perverted ambitions at the expense of the public good. Trump is part of that: someone who will use the people while they're useful, only to drop them and persecute them the moment they're not.

At the Presidential Election, and at the many Senate and Congressional and other elections happening this week, America faces a stark choice - almost nowhere else in the Western world has two-party politics so deeply embedded itself.

On the one hand, the Republican Party has been consumed by its own folly. Trump is just the vile symptom of a deeper sickness - the boil than alerts us to the plague hidden within. Intolerance and sectarianism were seized upon as electoral tools in the Sixties and the price is now come due: to be overthrown and subsumed beneath an egotistical populist.

For progressives, the failures of the Democrats are different. They are the product of compromise, of playing within the system, of trying to achieve gradual reform from the inside - that has left them tainted by association with those they have had to work with to build consensus.

Hillary Rodham Clinton symbolises those compromises to many on the Left, and beyond, perhaps more than any other Democrat. A life long career of those compromises have also made her perhaps the most qualified Presidential candidate in history.

That is the upside and down of trying to get things done from the inside: there is a cost to claims of being a reformer when you have been part of the establishment for so long. If a person spends long enough in the political arena, it becomes hard to see for what they actually.

But that is where the people come in: the activists, the radicals, the social reformers, ordinary citizens in thousands of constituencies. As Laurie Penny argues, those who want radical change always see those in power as an enemy and Hillary Clinton is the enemy she has wanted all her life.

Clinton is a centrist, a moderate, a woman, a political insider with a lifetime of experience: a graduate of Yale; a consistent campaigner for healthcare reform, achieving successes for children and reservists; as First Lady, she spoke in China to tell the world that Women's Rights were Human Rights; she built an international consensus to pull Iran in from the cold; and her name is cited as a leading campaigner for numerous reforming policies - like equal pay and care for 9/11 first responders.

For progressives, with narrow but stark options, voting for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US Presidential Election is a vote for the public good. In his own time, Alexander Hamilton stood opposed to the political fortunes of Aaron Burr, because he believed him to serve no interest but his own. Between the pragmatic public servant and the self-serving egotist, there is no debate as to who the arch-Federalist Hamilton would have supported between Clinton and Trump. As Hamilton argued:

"Happy will it be if our choice should be directed by a judicious estimate of our true interests, unperplexed and unbiased by considerations not connected with the public good."

But it doesn't stop there. One person alone does not make the future. No President, no leader, of no country, not even America, wields that kind of power. That is the work of movements. Progressives must find theirs and with it their voice. Remember: politics doesn't end with an election.

Vote Hillary, but don't do so expecting that you can just leave everything in her lap. Hillary Rodham Clinton is not a perfect candidate. No candidate is. She is human and flawed. So progressives voters must be prepared to hold her to account, to provide scrutiny and be critical, prepared to demand excellence at every turn.