Welcome to Blogging the Presidents: A Voting While Intoxicated™ Almost Original Series. We will be taking a serious look at the 42 men who have led our country and hopefully finding a few laughable details.
PART IV
Perhaps this is heresy against the civic religion, but I’m not that fond of the Constitution. It naturally follows that I am not that fond of the “Father of the Constitution.” As a Federalist alongside Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, he represented much of the ill that I gave Jefferson credit for opposing last week. He was the chief architect of the idea of checks and balances and ultimately of the Presidential system, which political science research has generally shown to be far inferior to Parliamentary systems when used in countries that aren’t the United States. Though much of the institutional mess that exists now is the result of compromises made at the Constitutional Convention and of unforeseen developments since then, he ultimately established a government that could not address the key issues of the day. Thus Madison is in part to blame for our present inability to act on health care, climate change, etc.
While he advocated for those aspects that prevented competent action, he was not responsible for the good aspects of the Constitution. He only authored the Bill of Rights as a compromise, not feeling it was necessary. As a federalist, he was less focused on state’s rights, federalism ultimately being a good trait. Finally, he eventually would dump the Federalists to join Jefferson in opposing judicial review (being party to its establishment in Marbury v Madison), one of the main Federalist accomplishments. So basically, Madison, the man most responsible for our institutional structure, was in almost all instances wrong about which institutional structures are ideal. It is no wonder we are now at an institutional disadvantage.
As a President, Madison was no great shakes, and indeed, despite my much more negative view of his Constitutional design, I do not have him ranked much lower than the historians. He greatly mishandled his duties as diplomat and commander-in-chief in getting into and struggling in the War of 1812. He was not particularly competent with economic management either.
James Madison is the shortest President ever, at 5′4″. As a fairly tall individual, I maintain the right to look down on James Madison. I maintain that same right with John McCain, who at 5′6″ would tie for the second shortest President. If we’ve learned anything from Napoleon, it is that short men shouldn’t lead…and in fact, the taller candidate is more likely too win (to hell with statistical significance) so I guess we have learned. And when we ignore that sage advice, we elect George Bush twice, Richard Nixon to a scandalous second term and Jimmy Carter to an ineffective term. Those four examples since 1924 do not bode well for shorter Presidents.
