Talk Less, Lose more: The Decisional Procrastination of Aaron Burr in Hamilton: An American Musical

Abstract

Aaron Burr’s career is looked at as one of the most paradoxical in early American history. He was a decorated revolutionary officer, a brilliant lawyer, and America’s Third Vice President. Yet, he ended his life with ambiguity, where history has written him off as a man who killed Hamilton in a duel that bordered on treason. While history usually attributes his failures to his political miscalculations, unwise alliances or sheer misfortune, this article aims to understand Burr in a psychological lens through which we understand the reasons for his inability to see through his goals.

This article examines Aaron Burr’s downfall, the former Vice President of the United States, through the lens of decisional procrastination, psychological tendencies that are found in individuals who avoid choices for fear of losing more than they might gain using Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Aaron Burr in Hamilton: An American Musical. In politics and in the personal life of Aaron Burr, this led to ambiguity in his decisions and created tensions due to the lack of credibility with his allies. While history records him as ambitious yet enigmatic, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton: An American Musical dramatizes his cautious nature through songs such as “Wait for It” and “The Room Where It Happens.” The article applies the theories of ‘decisional procrastination’ and argues that Burr’s downfall is not rooted in his lack of ability but from his tendency to “wait” until the decisive moment has passed, which leads to paralysis. Decisional procrastination is the delay in making decisions for the fear of making irreversible mistakes, which results in most of his failures. We also explore his relationships with his family, his ancestry, and his relationship with Alexander Hamilton, who was his rival as well as friend, and make sense of the psyche of Burr.