A Politician Thinking: The Creative Mind of James Madison (Volume 14)

Julian J. Rothbaum Distinguished Lecture

by Jack N. Rakove

James Madison presented his most celebrated and studied political ideas in his contributions to The Federalist , the essays that he, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay wrote in 1787–1788 to secure ratification of the U.S. Constitution. As Jack N. Rakove shows in A Politician Thinking , however, those essays do not illustrate the full complexity and vigor of Madison’s thinking. In this book, Rakove pushes beyond what Madison thought to examine how he thought, showing that this founder’s political genius lay less in the content of his published writings than in the ways he turned his creative mind to solving real political problems.

Rakove begins his analysis by examining how Madison drew upon his experiences as a member of the Continental Congress and as a Virginia legislator to develop his key ideas. Madison sought to derive lessons of history from his reading and his own experience, but he also thought about politics in terms of what we now recognize as game theory. After discussing Madison’s approach to the challenge of constitutional change, Rakove emphasizes his strikingly modern understanding of legislative deliberation, which he treated as the defining problem of republican government. Rakove also addresses Madison’s deliberation about ways to protect the rights of individuals and political minorities from the rule of “factious majorities.” The book closes by tracing how Madison developed strategies for maintaining long-term constitutional stability and adjusting to the new realities of governance under the Constitution.

Engaging and accessible, A Politician Thinking offers new insight concerning a key constitutional thinker and the foundations of the American constitutional system. Having a more thorough understanding of how Madison solved the problems presented in the formation of that system, we better grasp a unique moment of political innovation.

Genres: History, Politics, Biography

244 pages, Hardcover

Published September 28, 2017

About the author

Jack Rakove is the William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies and professor of political science and (by courtesy) law at Stanford, where he has taught since 1980. His principal areas of research include the origins of the American Revolution and Constitution, the political practice and theory of James Madison, and the role of historical knowledge in constitutional litigation. He is the author of six books, including Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution (1996), which won the Pulitzer Prize in History, and Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America (2010), which was a finalist for the George Washington Prize, and the editor of seven others, including The Unfinished Election of 2000 (2001). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and a past president of the Society for the History of the Early American Republic.

Reviews

[Lindsay Chervinsky]

A really smart book, but not written to be accessible for a broad audience. Assumes that the reader knows as much about political theory as the author does, and very few people do.

[Jeffery James]

This is the second book I've read from Rakove. Both were very informative, but difficult texts. I liked the book, but you really need to have done some serious reading prior to get a lot from the book. In the end I agre with Rakove's thesis and thought he gave some great insights into Madison's thoughts around the Constitution and the problems with attempting any Originalist interpretation of the Constitution. The book does a great job of teaching how Madison's own views of the Constitution changed over his lifetime.