The Grand Strategies of James Madison
Should James Madison rightly be called the “Father of the Constitution”? Colleen Shogan talks with Jack Rakove about why we ought to see Madison as the Constitution’s chief strategist, how the diminutive politician got his start, and why he resisted a Bill of Rights.
Featuring Jack Rakove, Ph.D., William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies and professor of political science and (by courtesy) law at Stanford University.
Read Jack Rakove’s essay on James Madison at Inpursuit.org.
INFO:
Tell us who inspires you: https://www.inpursuit.org/join
Please leave a rating and review on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. It helps other listeners find the show
Watch all episodes on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@InPursuitUSA
Hosted by Colleen Shogan, Ph.D. Written and Produced by Jim Ambuske, Ph.D. Production services by Stand Together. Audio mixing by Curt Dahl of CD Squared. Music from Music Bed. In Pursuit is a podcast by More Perfect
SOCIAL:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/p/In-Pursuit-USA-61580409336588/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/inpursuitusa/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@inpursuitusa
BlueSkye: https://bsky.app/profile/inpursuitusa.bsky.social
Jack Rakove: But I think part of Madison's genius was that he did
understand that if you came better prepared than others, and
you set the table, and you had a coherent agenda of action, even
it's not comprehensive, it's subject to criticism, it's
subject to revision, you have to convince others that it's going
to be right. But I think Madison understood that you could
elevate the ambitions of the convention by presenting them
with a really bold outline.
Colleen Shogan: In the summer of 1786, 12 commissioners from five
states met in Annapolis, Maryland. They hoped to reform
the Continental Congress' power to regulate trade. James Madison
was among them. For the normally cautious Madison, time was of
the essence. Regional factions were forming at home. Foreign
intrigue threatened the nation from abroad, and Congress was
largely powerless. The State of the Union was far from strong,
yet without enough commissioners in attendance, the Annapolis
Convention adjourned after only four days. But it did last long
enough for Madison and others to plan for a much bolder meeting
in Philadelphia the next year. As today's guest, Dr. Jack
Rakove argues, Madison was at the heart of the Constitution's
creation, although not necessarily in the ways we might
expect. So what can we learn from Madison's role as the
Constitution's chief strategist? I'm Colleen Shogan, and this is
In Pursuit, a podcast that explores lessons from America's
past to write the history of America's future. Episode Four:
"The Grand Strategies of James Madison." Jack Rakove, welcome
to In Pursuit.
Jack Rakove: Happy to be here.
Colleen Shogan: Thank you for joining us. Now Americans tend
to think of James Madison as the Father of the Constitution. You
argue something somewhat different. How do you think we
should think of him in relation to the Constitution?
Jack Rakove: I have a big objection against the concept of
a document like the Constitution can have a single father. It was
the product of three and a half months of deliberations with
some prior preparations. There were many members of the
convention who contributed significantly to its form, both
by proposing motions and argue about motions. You know, the
very end of the convention, Governour Morris was kind of the
one man Committee of Style who whipped the articles, adopted
the resolutions adopted to that point into their final shape,
and Madison lost most of the proposals they valued the most.
He was dead set against giving the states an equal vote in the
Senate. He lost that. He wanted to give the national government
a negative on all state laws. He wanted to create a council
revision comprising the president the Supreme Court that
would have an advisory role in legislation. Those were all
critical proposals of Madison, and he lost all three, so to
call him the father, given how many people participated in the
actual drafting of the text, it strikes me it's an easy term to
use, but it's not a very accurate one. Or to use
Madison's language, you might say it lacks perspicuity. But
since I spent a lot of time thinking about Madison over the
years, literally for the last half century, I think there's a
much better way to think about him. I think he was the leading
strategist of constitutional reform. He was the one who I
think thought most clearly and deeply about all the different
steps that had to be completed to produce a written
constitution and then to get it ratified in a way that would
prove satisfactory to the American people, not only the
short run, but over the long run as well. So asking what were the
elements of his constitutional strategy seems to me to be a
better question, particularly for scholars, but I think also
for ordinary viewers. Asking, What does it take to strategize
the adoption of a constitution? Just seemed to me to be a kind
of better framework for analysis.
Colleen Shogan: Tell us, ow did James Madison start to think
about politics? Where did he start to learn about politics?
What sparked his original interest in all forms of
constitutionalism, and I'm a political scientist, so should
we consider James Madison as the first American political
Jack Rakove: You can make a legitimate argument he was,
scientist?
although I think John Adams would probably also want to join
in their group, and to some extent, Thomas Jefferson. I
mean, you might say we had a generation of nascent political
scientists that came of age with the revolution itself. Madison's
case, you know, you have to go back to his education. He did
his college training at the College of New Jersey, now
Princeton University. He was taught by John Witherspoon, who
had a major impact on American higher education in the
revolution period. Was himself a delegate to the Continental
Congress. Madison entered public life pretty early. He was a
member of the Fifth Provincial Convention in the county of
Virginia, which wrote the state's first constitution, or I
suppose I should say the Commonwealth's first
constitution, in May 1776. Madison was not the most active
player. He was a member of the committee that framed the
Constitution and the Declaration of Rights. He was a young man
there. George Mason was probably the dominant figure in writing
the document. But Madison did have one big success. He altered
the religion article in the Virginia Declaration of Rights
actually was not quite part of the Constitution. It's a kind of
companion text to it. It's not formally part of it, but since
it's a compliment to it, so Madison alters the religion
article that turned it from a tolerationist position to a free
exercise position toleration. This means the government is
going to grant you the privilege or the right to be tolerated,
but what it can grant it can also revoke free exercise,
implies that it's a right that belongs to us. So Madison had
that initial experience, and then what happened with him? He
served in the first Virginia Legislature. He was defeated for
election in 1777 and became part of Virginia Council of State in
Council of State. Then in 1780 he went off the Continental
Congress. He served there three and a half years without going
back to his Montpelier plantation. Madison was actually
the first victim of term limits in congressional history, which
is sort of mildly ironic statement. But after he was term
limited out of the county of Congress in October 1783 he went
back to Virginia, and he joined the House of Delegates as a
representative from Orange County, where the Montpelier
plantation was located. He served there three years. Was a
dominant figure in the Virginia Legislature, so Madison had a
remarkable body of political experience behind him. Three and
a half years without a single break, attending the county of
Congress within three years as a dominant member of the lower
house of the nation's most populous province or state, and
he was always a very careful student of collective
deliberation. He wasn't all that much of an executive power guy.
All his formal political experience until he became
Secretary of State in 1801 was really spent in legislative or
quasi legislative bodies. And I think from that experience, it
taught him a number of things about how to become a
legislative strategist, how to try to organize deliberations.
You know, how to, in a sense, get the jump on other
legislators who are likely to be less industrious than you were.
And also, the last point I'd add here is that Madison had, I
think, profound and sophisticated memories of what
the experience of constitution making back in 1776 had been
like. And I think he understood that in 1776 the Americans had
spent too much time thinking about the past, thinking about
the grievances they'd suffered under the imperial rule of Great
Britain, and had not spent enough time thinking about the
issues that arise once you made the legislature and not the
executive, the dominant branch in government.
Colleen Shogan: Well, in particular, his time when he was
in Continental Congress. How do you think that affected what he
advocated for eventually, when the time for the Constitutional
Convention comes, how did that frame his view of what the
challenges facing the new nation were?
Jack Rakove: The most important lesson that Madison drew
involved the basic relationship between the Continental Congress
and the states. The fundamental problem was that the Continental
Congress, although it looked like a legislature, could not
pass legislation, as we use that term. It could not pass statutes
binding individuals. It could not impose penalties or
sanctions on the people who had to implement its decision. So
the basic theory of the Articles of Confederation was that the
Continental Congress would propose what we would say,
resolutions, requisitions and recommendations that the state
legislatures would voluntarily or would freely administer. And
I think the basic theory is, the states do have legislatures.
They're mostly a bunch of amateur lawmakers, but they did
have formal statutory authority, and so they could enact
legislation with penalties attached that would, in fact,
induce, or, some extent, compel behavior. So the theory is that
Congress lacks the wisdom to be able to frame legislation that
you can implement on a comprehensive basis across the
nation. So you'll tell the states what needs to be done,
and the states will implement that legislation in the way that
seems most efficient or most effective within their
boundaries. And when Madison sat down in 1787 with the convention
about to convene, and really a pretty early phase in the
process, then he writes out this document, The Vices of the
Political systems basically summarizes his overall critique
of what was wrong. I think the most fundamental flaw is he
realized that system would never work.
Colleen Shogan: So when Madison arrives at the Constitutional
Convention, he doesn't just arrive with no plan in place.
This is where I think your idea that he was the chief strategist
really comes into play. He understands that the person or
delegates that set the terms of the debate will actually in some
ways control or greatly influence the outcome. Tell us
about how he sets the terms of the debate.
Jack Rakove: There's something half accidental about this. The
Convention was supposed to convene on May 14, 1787. The
Pennsylvanians were there because they were the hosts. The
Virginians were there because they had issued the formal
invitation to the other states in the aftermath of the
Annapolis Convention. Had all the other delegates arrived on
time, had the convention convened as scheduled the
delegates probably would have had to spend some time sorting
out what their agenda of action was going to be. They probably
would have had some fairly open ended discussions about what
they wanted to do. So I think Madison understood that, in
effect, a remarkable opportunity had been granted. The Virginia
Plan became the basis of the Convention's initial
deliberations. No one could control the course the
convention would take. I mean, it's an open ended body. It's
acting on parliamentary procedures. But I think part of
Madison's genius was that he did understand that if you came
better prepared than others, and you set the table, and you had a
coherent agenda of action, even, you know, it's not
comprehensive, it's subject to criticism, it's subject to
revision. You have to convince others that it's going to be
right. But I think Madison understood that you could
elevate the ambitions of the convention by presenting them
with a really bold outline. As I said before, you know, if you've
ruled out the idea of retaining the Continental Congress, a new
Congress has to be empowered to legislate in the full formal
sense of the term, to pass laws, ordinary statutes, not
recommendations of states, but statutes binding everyone's
behavior. It also means you have to have a bicameral legislature,
and a big part of Madison's agenda, and actually, the thing
he fought hardest again was most disappointed over was he really
believed that you had to have proportional representation in
both houses of Congress.
Colleen Shogan: Another famous compromise is, of course, the
Three-Fifths Compromise, which not directly unrelated to what
we've just been talking about. So remind our listeners what
that was, and how did Madison justify it?
Jack Rakove: Well, Madison was the original author of the
Three-Fifths clause, sometimes called the Federal ratio,
actually going back to 1783. So in 1782, 1783 when you know
Madison's heyday in Congress, there was a big debate over
having a whole new program of revenue to provide some kind of
regular sources of income for the Continental Congress,
therefore, from the Union. There's a very complicated
formula where the obligations of each state were supposed to be
calculated on the basis of the value of their improved
property. The wholly unworkable formula is basically driven by
the New Jersey delegates. So they wanted to move to a
simpler, also more enforceable policy. There are several
different proposals they made, but one was that the expenses of
the Union should be apportioned among the states in part on the
basis of population. That raises the question, how do you think
about African Americans, or how do you think about the enslaved
population of the South? And then you get these kind of
complicated arguments. You know, it's very hard for us to justify
because we find all Three-Fifths Clause offensive as a matter of
principle, but in practice, it really was a political bar. A
political bargain between northern and southern states.
It's part of a set of negotiations about, let's have a
comprehensive revenue package that will satisfy the collective
body of interest. So the same question arises in 1787, we're
going to have a bicameral legislature. There are two ways
in which you could have proportional principles of
representation. One is you just do it by population, but the
other is, you may do it on the basis of property. And you know,
it's the whole basis of the southern economy. It's not the
ownership of land, it's the control of labor. I mean, land
is easy to get in the South. When we read it today, we think
it has a kind of racist quality. It really did not. And it's not
a way of saying Africans or African Americans, are point six
of the value of Caucasians, or whatever. It was just a formula
for portion representation. The flip side of it was it would
also, in addition to becoming the rule for portioning
representation of the house, which eventually would have a
role in the Electoral College as well, but it was also going to
be the formula for allocating direct taxes.
Colleen Shogan: But it's probably fair to say, I mean, I
understand what you're saying, that that's not necessarily the
same way that we view racism, but it's probably fair to say
that Madison and some of the other framers of the
Constitution probably didn't view representation in the same
way that we view representation today, as representation of the
Whole body politic that we view today. Were they particularly
concerned about representation of enslaved Africans in the
United States?
Jack Rakove: Enslaved African Americans, It sounds cruel, I
don't mean in that sense, but basically, have no civic
identity. They exist as property. They're chattel
slaves. They have no rights. Occasionally, through quirks of
the law, they acquire a bit of a legal identity, but they're so
marginal as not to matter. But I mean, Colleen, I would disagree
in one fundamental sense. And you know, I've actually, I've
written, been the main author of amicus curiae briefs in three
reapportionment cases, three gerrymandering cases that have
reached the Supreme Court, the Framers, actually, I think the
whole generation were attached to idea which actually
originates in England during the Civil War of the 1640s a
representative assembly should be in their language, a mirror,
a miniature, a portrait or a transcript of the larger
society. Now, how you define the larger society remains the
issue. For good and obvious reasons, we would not define it
the way they did. But if you put that, I won't call that a
quibble, because it's a substantive point,. but if you
put that point to one side in effect, what you wind up with is
they did believe a representative assembly should
resemble whoever defines the body politic, should resemble it
as closely as possible. It should literally re present the
body politic, the citizenry, in the Legislative Assembly.
Colleen Shogan: Another problem that Madison had was how to
ratify the Constitution. Can you talk about that?
Jack Rakove: Yeah, it's a major issue, and it is one of
Madison's intellectual or, I should say, political
preoccupations. You have to go back to 1776 or actually, let's
say 1770s there is a legal principle that says "leges
posteriores priores contrarias abrogant," "later laws
contradicting earlier ones abrogate them." I think actually
goes back into Canon Law. And the idea here is the Articles of
Confederation were ratified by the state legislatures, and all
13 states had to ratify them. That's why it took three and a
half years to ratify it, becau se Maryland, for its own
reasons, Maryland, held out until 1781 and what happens when
you get in the 1780s there are three occasions when the
Continental Congress sent out amendments to the articles to
the States. There's an early one in 1781 which Rhode Island
torpedoes. There's another one the revenue package that we
talked about earlier, which includes the early version of
Three-Fifths Clause, which never got unanimous state vote. And
then 1784 Congress sent out two amendments relating to foreign
commerce to the states, and none of them ever attained the
unanimity rule. And then what happens in 1786, 87 is
eventually 12 of the 13 states agree to send delegations to the
federal convention Wednesday. Rhode Island, sometimes known as
Rouge Island, also called in the 18th century the "home of Jews,
Turks and infidels," because in its practices of radical
religious disestablishment, Rhode Island refused to send a
delegation. And if they refuse to send a delegation, what
chances that they're going to ratify the Constitution? So I
think, in fact, Rhode Island's decision had a powerfully
liberating effect that it said we have to abandon the unanimity
rule. So that's step one. But step two is, if you've come to
the point where you believe that you really need to have the
supremacy of federal law over state law, you need to have some
clear and decisive method of establishing what is the legal,
constitutional basis of federal supremacy. If the state
legislatures remain the ratifying parties, you're
vulnerable to the "leges posteriores priores contrarias
abrogant," one state legislature cannot bind its successors. So
at that point, you need to come up another method, and the
method to come up and come out of Massachusetts. It's too
complicated story to tell in det here, but it took Massachusetts
basically four years to write and ratify a new constitution
after 1776 and the end result was that the Constitution had to
be ratid by a convention that was called specially for that
purpose. It couldn't act legislatively, and then the
document produced had to be ratified by the people of
Massachusetts meeting in their town meetings. It's a kind of
confusing procedure, because the convention that wrote the
constitution, didn't fully explain what form the
ratification by the town meeting should take. So they have a kind
of jumble of replies. Basically, they throw them up in the air
and say, well, it looks like it's ratified. That set a
crucial precedent. But Madison had a deeper concern here, which
was, if they want to have it ratified, you need to set up
some form of popular ratification. So that is, you
set up a quasi legislative body, or deliberative body that is not
a legislature in the strict sense of the term. They are
elected by the people. In most states, the electorate for the
ratification conventions in 1787-88, was larger than the
ordinary electorate for the state legislature. So there is a
bit of a kind of social compact aspect with their process, but
you want to keep the process finite. And so what Madison does
is he says the people can speak in a loud and a proud voice, but
they can only say one of two words:
Colleen Shogan: yes or no,
Jack Rakove: Yes or no. They have to approve the Constitution
in its entirety. They can recommend amendments for later
consideration, but they can't make their approval to the
Constitution dependent upon the prior adoption of the amendment.
So I think this again, comes back to the idea of Madison as a
constitutional strategist. He wanted to come up with a mode of
ratification that would satisfy his subtativecriteria,
Colleen Shogan: And there's not going to be a second
constitutional convention, right? I mean, that's what his
friend Edmund Randolph wanted. He said, Well, we'll just come
back again and we'll gather all the changes and edits that
people want, and we'll have another convention. Madison
said, Well, this is going to go on forever, right? There's never
going to be an end.
Jack Rakove: When we read Madison's correspondence, first
and foremost, we read his letters to and from Thomas
Jefferson, who really was his closest political ally, but when
he writes Randolph, he refers him as my dear friend. When he
writes Jefferson, it's always dear sir. There's a more formal
mode of address. And you know, Madison worked really hard to
convince Randolph that he was wrong. And actually, your
listeners can look this up online. There's a wonderful
letter that Madison wrote to Randolph on January 10, 1788, in
which Madison describes his views of public opinion. It's a
somewhat skeptical letter. Madison believed that, you know,
every citizen had a right to consent, but he's very nervous
about the process by which ordinary citizens reach
decisions. So I think Madison, he really was concerned. You
know, if you have a second convention, you don't what's
going to happen, just as nobody knew what was going to happen to
the first convention. So let's say you send delegations back.
They may come with instructions for their state legislatures,
and once they know what's been proposed, they can say, we'll
accept this, but we're not going to accept that. If we lose that,
we'll take a walk.
Colleen Shogan: Now another example of Madison, you know,
acting as a strategist is, of course, after the convention,
when he is recruited to write some of the essays that become
the Federalist Papers. Of course, he writes some of the
most famous Federalist Papers, Federalist 10 on faction,
Federalist 51 on the separation of powers. Tell us, how does he
come to write some of the Federalist Papers? And was this
influential? Was this a continuation of his role as
chief strategist?
Jack Rakove: The idea for writing the Federalist, of
course, came from Alexander Hamilton. The essays were
originally designed to sway the voters in New York, which
everyone knew was gonna be a really divided state because
Governor George Clinton, who had a powerful political machine,
was an anti-Federalist. So Hamilton recruited John Jay.
John Jay was not of the best health during this period. He
approached William Duer, or maybe one or two other people.
But Madison was still in New York because he was he went back
to attending the Continental Congress. He was no longer term
limited out so he would retaken his seat early in 1787 so
Madison became the second author, because Jay wasn't able
to contribute as much as he might have. The hard thing is,
no one has ever been able to prove or demonstrate that the
Federalist per se itself had any impact, or any kind of
consequential impact on the outcome of the debates. You can
make a good case that there's a public speech that James Wilson
gave in Philadelphia on, I think, October 6, 1787 where
Wilson made a number of arguments, became rather
controversial, that Wilson's speech, both on the pro and con
side, had much more of an impact on the ongoing public debate
than the Federalist ever did. But if you try to work on the
underlying theory of the Constitution, using that term
very broadly, and to think about the kinds of political insights
that went into it, Federalist remains far and away the best
source.
Colleen Shogan: One more thing that Madison offers is, of
course, the Bill of Rights. Jefferson pushes him to include
the Bill of Rights, to make that part of the Constitution. Was
Madison sure that it was necessary.
Jack Rakove: No, Madison had some qualms about it. Some of
them, I think, are actually fairly serious. They're fairly
substantive. To quote the late Ronald Dworkin, our politics has
always been about "rights talk." Language of rights has always
permeated American political discussion going back to the
18th, arguably the 17th century. But there are different ways in
which you can talk about rights and different ways in which you
can explain what their sources are. How do they originate? What
gives them authority? And so on. And then what happens? I think
beginning in 1776 as I said earlier, I think eight of the
states did adopt declarations, they usually call them
declarations of rights that were either generally accompanied the
first eight constitutions, or, in the case of Pennsylvania in
1776 Massachusetts in 1780 were actually part of the
Constitution, but it wasn't clear that they created what we
would regard as black letter, legally binding rights. The
operative verb in many of these statements was not "shall,"
which is a command, but "ought," which is maybe a moral
obligation, but not a legal requirement. So I think one of
the things that happened is when you get to 1788, and political
pressure builds to add a bill of rights to the declaration and
Jefferson, of course, is Madison's correspondence with
Jefferson on this ain 1787- 1788, is just a wonderful body
of letters to read and reread and also to study. I think that
Madison had two concerns, if previously you had not been sure
what the real source, you could have multiple sources to say,
this is how we know what the right is. You have a written
constitution, and you treat a supreme law. You have one
optimal source, but if that becomes the optimal source, what
happens if a right is omitted? The answer to that is, well, you
put in the Ninth Amendment, "the enumeration of certain rights in
this constitution shall not be construed to deny or disparage
others retained by the people." Of course, you don't know what
those other rights are, which is the problem, but so you have an
enumeration problem, but you can solve that, possibly with the
Ninth Amendment, though we don't have another basis for saying
what right really is. Think about the right to abortion
would be a great way to conceptualize this. And then the
other problem you have, which Madison thought about, and I
think I pay more attention to others, is there's an
enumeration problem, there's also a textualization problem.
If you reduce a right to a literary formula, think about
the Second Amendment. You know, by way of example, what happens
if the text is wrong, or what happens if there's something
defective in the text? I think Madison was particularly worried
about rights of conscience, going back to his youth, and
what he said about his role in the Virginia Declaration of
Rights, that was the first issue we care about deeply back in
1776 and then, of course, he enlarged his sphere of his
experience and his observations. But if you think extending
religious toleration to dissenting groups or marginal
groups might be problematic, you know, maybe it might be
dangerous. I mean, if you don't frame that language broadly
enough, it might operate not as a source of rights, but actually
is a kind of a trap, or not a trap, but the result might be
more constrained than what you'd ideally want. Maybe you better
just to leave things go unstated. So Madison did have
some hang up on this, but he also felt, I think the most
important point is he felt, politically, that to bring the
whole ratification process to a satisfactory close, even though
he had reservations about whether a Bill of Rights was
actually necessary. But Madison felt there are a lot of well
meaning, if somewhat misguided, anti-Federalists out there who
really felt this was necessary, and if you want to get them to
sign on to the Constitution, that would be the best way of
doing it.
Colleen Shogan: Well, you've spent, as you said, more than 50
years thinking about James Madison. Can you tell us here
and in pursuit. As we enter our 250th year in the United States,
we're trying to look back at some of the lives of these
individuals and learn things from the past to inform our
present and future. What do you think we can learn from James
Madison?
Jack Rakove: Well, Colleen, I have to tell you, in my personal
life, I have an optimist by nature, probably be the most
optimistic person I know.
Colleen Shogan: I am too.
Jack Rakove: But when I think about the looming semi
quincentennial, I'm quite depressed, actually. As I told
an audience at AEI, at an event back in June, I was asked to
lead off the post dinner conversation, what I think was
gonna happen, is that I think it's gonna be a disaster. The
reason I think it's gonna be disaster is I think our
constitutional system is failing. And I really mean
failure. One of the subjects I work on actively now is to come
up with a theory of constitutional failure, which
is, that's exactly what Madison was doing in April 1787, I've
had this realization "The Vices of Political System of the
United States," which is this critical document to understand
Madison's originality, it really helps him to set his agenda. Is
basically a study of constitutional failure. Partly,
it's the failure of the Articles of Confederation, but it's also
the failure of the state legislature as the dominant
institutions of domestic governments. So I spent a lot of
time thinking about what would happen if we're really in the
state of constitutional collapse. And I'm not, as I
said, I'm personally optimistic, but from all the evidence in
front of us, I just think all the institutions of national
government are failing in different ways, the presidency
for obvious reasons, both houses of Congress for different
reasons. I think the Supreme Court, I think it has its own
agenda. You know? I think the district courts and the
appellate courts are working as hard as they can to do the right
thing and do their job. The Supreme Court's not giving them
any guidance. And so I've started to think about, if I'm
in a Madisonian position, what would I do? So I have a back
project going called "Reflections on the American
Political System: Some post Madisonian Reflections." That's
the original working title. Now I think of largely in the
subtitle, "Some Post-Madison Reflections on Constitutional
Failure," which would be a kind of quasi Madisonian analysis.
Madison was on point on something where Madison's
writings were directly relevant to where we are. I try to build
upon his initial insights and where he wasn't, I tried to, you
know, provide a fresh analysis of my own, I hope, still working
within a Madisonian paradigm. So that's, yeah, that's what I
think about. And so that's why I think, you know, the nation is
moving into a very critical and disturbing period my philosophy
was, historian is predict nothing. It's hard enough
explaining the past without being able to predict the
future. We're in a very serious position, and that's why
thinking critically about, you know, the shortcomings of the
Constitution.
Colleen Shogan: This has been a terrific conversation to give us
the framework to think about that. So we appreciate Jack
Rakove for you joining us with In Pursuit.
Jack Rakove: I was really happy to be here
Colleen Shogan: To read Jack Rakove's essay on James Madison
and to enjoy other great In Pursuit essays and podcasts,
visit in pursuit.org. In Pursuit with Colleen Shogan is a podcast
by More Perfect. The series is written and produced by Jim
Ambuske. Our theme music is kleos by Charlie Ryan, audio
mixing by Curt Dahl of CD squared. Please rate and review
the show on your favorite podcast app and tell us which
Americans inspire you.