Bidlack To Play Alexander Hamilton?

Hal Bidlack is a retired Air Force officer who taught political science at the Air Force Academy in his home Colorado Springs district until deciding this year to run for Congress as a Democrat. At a posh Patton Boggs post-convention party Tuesday, Bidlack didn’t mention that he already knows his way around Washington, having worked on highly classified nuclear weapons security issues in the former Soviet Union under the aegis (ostensibly) of the Bush State Department. But he did say he’s weighing continuing his other avocation if he’s elected come November: appearing before audiences — on radio and in live performances — portraying Alexander Hamilton in one-man period costumed stage performances.

“It could be a bit dicey,” Bidlack admitted. Hamilton, the nation’s first Treasury Secretary who was killed in a duel with Vice President Aaron Burr, had a notoriously low opinion of Congress and didn’t think much of the Bill of Rights either. On the other hand, his audiences have included Congressional Families’ Night at the Smithsonian Institution, where his unscripted Hamiltonian question-and-answer routine, he said, went over quite well.

— Andy Glass