The Virginia Plan and the discarded Articles
Zadek’s standing account of the Constitutional Convention makes Madison its author by preparation: “when they met in Philadelphia in 1787, the ostensible purpose of the meeting was to fix the Articles of Confederation. But Madison had a different idea, and he ran the show, and he attended that meeting in 1787 with the outlines, called the Virginia Plan, of a new government starting from scratch. And he was the most prepared, so he sort of got to moderate the discussion” [[episodes/crossroads_for_liberty__with_william_watkins_jr|Crossroads for Liberty with William Watkins Jr. (2017)]]. Thomas Fleming traced the same effort back further, to Madison’s 1785 visit to Mount Vernon after Rhode Island alone blocked an impost that all twelve other states had approved Was The Ratification of the Constitution A Mistake? (2012).
The Bill of Rights nobody wanted
The episode with Carol Berkin is the show’s most detailed treatment Carol Berkin on The Bill of Rights No One Wanted (2016). Berkin’s argument is that a Bill of Rights was unwanted at the convention and that Madison proposed one in the First Congress as a tactic: “Let us pass a Bill of Rights. Let us get credit for it. And that will, in modern parlance, separate the Anti-Federalist base from its leadership.” She reported that the proposal was greeted with groans — colleagues called him “Little Jemmy Madison” and told him they had tonnage rates and a judiciary to organise — and that it took a month of badgering before the House would debate it.
Zadek supplied two complicating facts from Berkin’s book: Madison had made a campaign promise to his Virginia district when running against Monroe, and several states had ratified on the understanding that amendments would follow. He also stated the reason Madison thought the cost was nil: “Madison felt adding a Bill of Rights did not do anything of substance because Madison believed that even without the Bill of Rights, the federal government didn’t have the power to interfere with the freedoms that are protected. So for Madison, it was a freebie. It didn’t cost anything because he wasn’t giving up any power.”
Berkin added the part she said listeners should respect: Madison wanted federal power to intervene when states abused the rights of minorities — meaning dissenting religious sects — and the Senate, then chosen by state legislatures, struck it out.
Zadek returned to the same point elsewhere as a criticism. Madison, he argued, understood incentives but misjudged whether structure alone would protect liberty: “the founders, Madison in particular, believed the Bill of Rights was unnecessary. … But the proof that Madison was in that regard naive is any litigation in support of free speech never cites the Constitution itself” Troubleshooting the Constitution (2022).
Ambition counteracting ambition
With Mike Munger, the show connected Madison to public choice economics Troubleshooting the Constitution (2022). Munger reported James Buchanan’s own account of The Calculus of Consent — “All we were doing is writing down some of the scientific principles behind what James Madison was trying to accomplish in the Constitution” — and summarized the design: “We can’t rely on good people. What we need is good rules,” citing Federalist No. 51 on separation of powers, “that ambition can be made to counteract ambition.” Zadek’s framing of the same idea, which he attributes to Madison as a paraphrase, recurs across the archive: “if all men were angels, we wouldn’t need laws” Troubleshooting the Constitution (2022), and in the Buckley episode as “If men were angels, we wouldn’t need laws” [[episodes/f_h__buckley_on__the_republic_of_virtue|F.H. Buckley on The Republic of Virtue (2017)]]. He draws from it the conclusion that “once you create a government and give government the exclusive power to use force and coercion … you darn well better have a lot of controls on the use of that force.”
Madison against maladministration
In the impeachment episodes with Gene Healy of Cato, Madison appears on the restrictive side: at the convention, George Mason proposed “maladministration” as a ground for impeachment, Madison objected that it was too broad and amorphous, and the convention settled on “high crimes and misdemeanors” Low Tweets and Misdemeanors: The Impeachment Debate Through the Lens of History and the Constitution (2018). Healy cautioned that too much is made of the exchange, since Madison’s convention notes were not published for decades and no ratifier saw them.
As warning
Arguing against the permanence of post-9/11 security measures, Zadek paraphrased Madison on the manner in which liberty is lost: “Madison warned us that we will lose our freedom—and I’m simply paraphrasing—one tiny loss of freedom at a time. And we look back and we say, ‘Where did it go?’ Well, it went one tiny freedom at a time” War – A Rationale For Extra-Constitutional Power? (2013).