Early in the musical’s Off Broadway run at the Public Theater, Timothy F. Geithner — the nation’s 75th Treasury secretary (2009-13) — showed up. And on Wednesday night, two more Hamilton successors were in the Broadway audience: Robert E. Rubin, the 70th Treasury secretary (1995-99), and Jacob J. Lew, the current one (since 2013); they were at the same performance by coincidence, each drawn by an interest in their shared predecessor.
“If you’re secretary of the Treasury, in your outer office is a big picture of Alexander Hamilton, and there is a strong sense of Hamilton in the building,” Mr. Rubin said Thursday in a telephone interview. “His sense of fiscal responsibility is still alive in the Treasury — people do identify with Hamilton.”
Mr. Lew went to the show in large part to celebrate his wedding anniversary; he said he bought the tickets online himself. He is not the most popular figure in Hamiltonland, because he is championing an effort to redesign the $10 bill to feature a woman, which would most likely mean downgrading Hamilton’s prominent position on the currency.