Biography of the 'father of politics' in America
By Richard Beeman |
November 4, 2011, Friday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
NO one would ever have mistaken James Madison for George Washington. Short, scrawny and sickly, he suffered from a hypochondria that convinced him he would lead neither a long nor a healthy life. He was a miserable public speaker who tended to lapse into inaudible mumbling, and well into his career as a politician, he continued to shrink back in horror at the idea of going out on the stump and putting on "an electioneering appearance."
True, he had a powerful intellect, but compared with that of his more urbane friend and neighbor Thomas Jefferson, Madison's intellectual appetite, fixed as it was on political history and theory, seemed narrow, circumscribed. All in all, he would be an unlikely candidate for success in today's media-dominated political world. Perhaps a professor of history or political theory at a university that didn't require much teaching. But one of the most influential politicians of his generation? Hardly.
Richard Brookhiser, a senior editor at National Review and the author of 10 previous books, sees beyond the man's personal frailties in "James Madison." For Brookhiser, Madison was "the Father of Politics. He lived in his head, but his head was always concerned with making his cherished thoughts real." This Madison is no ivory tower pedant but, rather, a relentless and immensely successful politician who put all of his heavy-duty thinking to good use.
Despite his pessimistic predictions about his longevity, Madison lived to the age of 85. From the time that he graduated from Princeton in 1771 until his retirement from the presidency in 1817, he devoted himself to politics and, in particular, to the building of the American nation. In this short, breezily written biography, Brookhiser attempts to cover all of the major events of Madison's public career.
This is no small feat, for Madison was involved in nearly every political controversy and decision of his age.
He was Jefferson's indispensable ally in the struggle for religious liberty in revolutionary Virginia; he served tirelessly as a delegate to the Continental Congress during the most trying years of the Revolutionary War; he is deservedly remembered as "the Father of the Constitution;" he was the principal, albeit reluctant, author of what would become our federal Bill of Rights; as the prime organizer of the Jeffersonian Republican Party, he was in many ways the inventor of the very idea of a modern party system; he served as President Jefferson's secretary of state and most trusted adviser; finally, as a wartime president, Madison had to endure not only the burning of Washington, but also conflict and intrigue within his own party.
The amount of scholarship chronicling these events is immense, and although Brookhiser is somewhat sparing in acknowledging his debts to historians who have preceded him, his sprightly narrative will serve as an entertaining introduction for those who are making their first acquaintance with Madison. Moreover, Brookhiser's book is a useful corrective to some recent works in the fields of political science and law that place emphasis on Madison the theorist.
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. As an avid observer of the hyper-partisan political environment of our own age, Brookhiser uses Madison's often tumultuous career to remind us that day-to-day politics have never been very pretty. Anyone involved in the political wars as long and as relentlessly as Madison was surely bound to make a few missteps and a few enemies along the way. But Brookhiser effectively argues that Madison, by melding his knowledge of theory with shrewd political instincts, deserves a place close to the top of the list of America's most successful politicians.
True, he had a powerful intellect, but compared with that of his more urbane friend and neighbor Thomas Jefferson, Madison's intellectual appetite, fixed as it was on political history and theory, seemed narrow, circumscribed. All in all, he would be an unlikely candidate for success in today's media-dominated political world. Perhaps a professor of history or political theory at a university that didn't require much teaching. But one of the most influential politicians of his generation? Hardly.
Richard Brookhiser, a senior editor at National Review and the author of 10 previous books, sees beyond the man's personal frailties in "James Madison." For Brookhiser, Madison was "the Father of Politics. He lived in his head, but his head was always concerned with making his cherished thoughts real." This Madison is no ivory tower pedant but, rather, a relentless and immensely successful politician who put all of his heavy-duty thinking to good use.
Despite his pessimistic predictions about his longevity, Madison lived to the age of 85. From the time that he graduated from Princeton in 1771 until his retirement from the presidency in 1817, he devoted himself to politics and, in particular, to the building of the American nation. In this short, breezily written biography, Brookhiser attempts to cover all of the major events of Madison's public career.
This is no small feat, for Madison was involved in nearly every political controversy and decision of his age.
He was Jefferson's indispensable ally in the struggle for religious liberty in revolutionary Virginia; he served tirelessly as a delegate to the Continental Congress during the most trying years of the Revolutionary War; he is deservedly remembered as "the Father of the Constitution;" he was the principal, albeit reluctant, author of what would become our federal Bill of Rights; as the prime organizer of the Jeffersonian Republican Party, he was in many ways the inventor of the very idea of a modern party system; he served as President Jefferson's secretary of state and most trusted adviser; finally, as a wartime president, Madison had to endure not only the burning of Washington, but also conflict and intrigue within his own party.
The amount of scholarship chronicling these events is immense, and although Brookhiser is somewhat sparing in acknowledging his debts to historians who have preceded him, his sprightly narrative will serve as an entertaining introduction for those who are making their first acquaintance with Madison. Moreover, Brookhiser's book is a useful corrective to some recent works in the fields of political science and law that place emphasis on Madison the theorist.
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. As an avid observer of the hyper-partisan political environment of our own age, Brookhiser uses Madison's often tumultuous career to remind us that day-to-day politics have never been very pretty. Anyone involved in the political wars as long and as relentlessly as Madison was surely bound to make a few missteps and a few enemies along the way. But Brookhiser effectively argues that Madison, by melding his knowledge of theory with shrewd political instincts, deserves a place close to the top of the list of America's most successful politicians.
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