I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Washington Administration
The National Gazette was an anti-federalist newspaper that hit George Washington and his administration pretty hard towards the end of his first term and only got worse and more vitriolic for his second term. It was also no stranger to publishing anonymous op-eds, a common practice of lot of newspapers, which found a nice outlet for such names as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, no fan of what they saw as acting on some of Washington’s most monarchical tendencies.
While most newspapers of the era were heavily partisan, what set the National Gazette apart was its use as a vehicle for a sitting “senior administration official” to attack the very presidency they were working for.
As far as the recent anonymous op-ed in the New York Times goes, I’ll have more about my personal feelings of it in tomorrow’s comic…
