Poor Barnaby Joyce tried to invoke early American political life in his speech to the Nationals conference on the weekend. In an effort to clothe himself in the garb of history, and perhaps tap into some local Tea Party resonances, Joyce declared himself an heir to Thomas Jefferson rather than Alexander Hamilton:

“Hamilton was absolutely instrumental in where the United States went, I absolutely recognise that. But he was seen, and I quote, as ‘part of the urbane, mercantile interests of the seaports’. Where quite a few thought that the United States was heading back to a form of financial monarchy. Jefferson was seen as aspiring to a decentralised, agrarian republic. Now I think we might find Jefferson in the Nationals party.”

But Barnaby might want to read beyond The Big Book of US Presidents. In the latest in Crikey‘s Get Fact series, let’s hit the history books and put the claim to the test.

As Washington’s secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton inherited the problem of the US’ Revolutionary War debts, but realised it was an opportunity to establish a financial market that would fund American development rather than a burden that would hold the new nation back. Jefferson despised Hamilton and railed at both the establishment of a financial market and the economic development it enabled.

But once he was president, he took a somewhat different view, and in 1803 forced Treasury secretary Albert Gallatin –- whose statue stands at the opposite end of the Treasury Building in DC from Hamilton’s — to add $13 million, or nearly 3% of US GDP, to the national debt in one go to fund the Louisiana Purchase.

Be better as Jefferson and Gallatin did later work assiduously to reduce US debt, something that presumably appeals to Barnaby “Australia will default on its debt” Joyce. Their main saving? Military expenditure, with the nascent US navy abandoned and the army shrunk to notional levels (not to mention its commanding general was on the payroll of Spain).

It’s not clear how that fits with another part of Barnaby’s speech, where he attacked the Gillard government’s defence cuts. “Our defence budget is now as low as it has ever been as a percentage of GDP since 1938 … it worries me because I have a vague recollection, from reading in school, of what happened in 1939,” the Sage of St George noted.

Jefferson’s “decentralised agrarian republic” was based on small government — so small it deliberately did not have the money to invest in any regional infrastructure to enable farmers to deliver produce to market, except where rivers could connect them to major centres. Presumably Barnaby would be happy with eastern state farmers sending all their produce down the Murray-Darling for distribution? And Jefferson’s republic was based fundamentally on slavery, a system that in Jefferson’s case included s-xual exploitation of African-American women.

But perhaps we shouldn’t get into Jefferson’s personal views: despite railing against national debt, he died $100,000 in debt, a monumentally vast amount for 1826. And on his death he freed just five of his 200 slaves (unlike Washington, who freed all of his). They didn’t include the woman who bore him six children, Sally Hemings.

Ideals to aspire to, Barnaby. We rate his historical revisionism mostly rubbish.