As to believing that the authors had a special insight into the Constitution’s virtues: They were promoting the Constitution, for having virtues, so it’s like believing the president of the Hair Club for Men wouldn’t lie to you about the Hair Club for Men because he’s the president of the Hair Club for Men. That was once an actual TV ad. We were young when the ad was running, and stoned, and might not have passed for PSG’s in the making, and yet the blatancy of the Hair Club Fallacy always drew snorts of derision. Murray and other PSG’s of his persuasion don’t bring skepticism even that elementary to their regard for the Federalist Papers.
68 is the one on why the system for electing the president is good. Murray invoked it in response to a suggestion from somebody that the real reason for the Electoral College is that it would have been logistically impossible at the time to count a national popular vote. Murray dismissed that idea by noting that 68 was written before the Constitution was ratified, which didn’t really address the question but did take as given that the essay is the best source for the reasoning behind the Electoral College.
The essay doesn’t in fact mention the logistics issue, but the issue is not beneath consideration, as Murray implied. More interesting is the absence of any argument from him regarding the Electoral College’s origins and merits. He posted this: “Federalist #68 was published before the Constitution was ratified. Perhaps you haven't read it?” In other words, “see Hamilton.” That closes the case.
Like I said. Holy writ.
Hamilton’s argument in 68 is less an argument than a series of assertions, and one of the most important things about those assertions is that Hamilton did not believe them to be true, and yet Murray and other PSG’s do, and that’s weird. The discrepancy became glaring when one of Murray’s followers chimed in to cite, with approval, Hamilton’s opening: “The mode of appointment of the Chief Magistrate of the United States is almost the only part of the system, of any consequence, which has escaped without severe censure, or which has received the slightest mark of approbation from its opponents.” From which the poster drew this conclusion: “The EC was largely seen at the time, by damn near everyone, to be just fine.” To believe that, you have to believe both Hamilton’s claim that the presidential election system had escaped censure and that the kind of people Hamilton was talking about, PSG’s of the day, weren’t just a proud minority but also, contradictorily, damn near everyone.