JamesMadison has his fingerprints all over the shutdown
Everyone is talking about the president, even though he is a cerebral, aloof guy. His wife is glam (her enemies say, too glam). There are troubles abroad, and deadlock on Capitol Hill.
This is President James Madison, of course, who was in the White House two centuries ago but is still making news.
In the last fewweeks, Doug Bandowof the Cato Institute wrote that Madisonwouldn’t let President Barack Obama bomb Syria without authorization from Congress; Lyle Denniston of the National Constitution Center and Bloomberg Viewcolumnist Cass R. Sunstein each wrote that Madisonwould deplore the factionalism that has shut down the federal government; William Bennett and Christopher Beach wrote in TheWall Street Journal that Madisonwould scorn Congress and its staffmembers for exempting themselves fromthe provisions of the Affordable Care Act; and Jeffrey Anderson wrote that the health caremeasure, though it is the lawof the land, hasn’t been ratified bywhat Madison called “the cool and deliberate sense of the community.”
For a man who died in 1836, Madison gets out and about.
We care aboutMadison, not for his 1809-17 presidency, which had some notable failures, but for his role as Father of the Constitution.
The 36-year-old was only one of 55 delegates who attended the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. He lost as many arguments as he won. But he was in his seat for every meeting; he kept the most complete notes; he defended the finished product in the Federalist Papers; and as a representative from Virginia, he shepherded the Bill of Rights through the first Congress under the new system.
Madisonwas a believer in structural balance. The size and diversity of the nation covered by the newConstitution and the internal divisions within the newgovernmentwould present toomany hurdles for demagogues or villainswhowished to take power.
When we wring our hands over deadlock inWashington, we fail to consider that deadlock was, to a degree, what Madison and his fellow Constitution makers labored to achieve. The people would ultimately get their way, but stupid or oppressive schemes should be deadlocked.
Therewas a second Madison, however, lesswell known now, but equally important: the Father of Politics. In 1791-92, Madison and his lifelong friend Thomas Jefferson founded America’s first political party. Madison gave it its name— the Republican Party— whichwas changed to the Democratic Party in the 1820s. (Today’s Republican Party is a later, different organization.) It is the secondoldest political party in theworld, after Britain’s Tories.
He assembled the first national coalition: Virginians like himself and Jefferson, plus New Yorkers like Aaron Burr. He helped start the first partisan news media: the National Gazette, a political newspaper published in Philadelphia, then the nation’s capital, and edited by Philip Freneau, a friend of his from college. And he and Jefferson constructed the first political machine: the Virginia Dynasty.
That Madison would recognize the political sideshows that characterizeWashington deadlock now. Partisan advantage, spin, media yak-in-the-box: These, too, are his children.
Even his old political party, the Republicans-turned-Democrats, is the same in one crucial respect. Although its base has changed beyond recognition, from Southern slave owners to modern multiculturalists, it still presents itself as the party of the little guy against the rich.
In his day, the rich his party labored to frustratewereHamilton and his banker buddies. In our day, they areTea Party conservatives unconcerned with the uninsured.
Madison would be right at home in our political fights— and he would be equally at home on many sides of them.