James Madison

Just finished reading Richard Brookhiser's James Madison (Basic Books 2011). A bit short (250 pp.) but well-written and certainly entertaining. As the NYT review observed, "While Brookhiser respects the quality of Madison’s intellect, he is more interested in Madison the politician, less concerned with the consistency of Madison’s thought than with Madison’s skill as an activist." Just so.

While I would certainly have appreciated more about the inner workings of Madison's first and second cabinets, his relationship with Congress when president, and his religious views (precious little grist for contemporary conservative American evangelicals intent on Christianizing the Founders: "The most he ever said, in a wintry letter at the end of his life, was that 'the mind prefers' the idea of an infinitely good, if invisible, God. 'In this . . . belief all philosophical reasoning on the subject must perhaps terminate.'" at 21), Brookhiser chooses to focus on Madison the politician.

And what a politician he was! Virtual creator of the party system in America (against what was then believed to be its abhorrent character), shrewd manipulator of public opinion through the media, and sometimes tough political infighter (but probably not often tough enough; he was a bit too nice as president to get his hands dirty). Certainly not afraid to change his mind on important issues (he was against the Bank of the United States until he was for it; he was all-in on States rights and perhaps even interposition until he was against them).

Brookhiser, like Susan Dunn in Dominion of Memories (blogged here), comments on Madison's failure to exercise any effective influence at Virginia's 1829 state constitutional convention, although not in as much detail. He concludes with a fair reading of Madison's groping failure to articulate anything more than unworkable solutions to the issue of slavery but correctly, in my view, notes Madison's overarching goal: to form and preserve the union of the several United States.