“One of my favorite founders”
Zadek says so in more than one episode. In the impeachment episode with Gene Healy: “George Mason, whom you referred to, who by the way is one of my favorite Founders” Low Tweets and Misdemeanors: The Impeachment Debate Through the Lens of History and the Constitution (2018). In the episode with Don Boudreaux of George Mason University: “the namesake of your university, George Mason, is one of my great heroes, the father of the Bill of Rights” Legalize Insider Trading (2009). In the ratification episode, after Thomas Fleming listed the Anti-Federalists, Zadek interjected simply: “George Mason, my other hero” Was The Ratification of the Constitution A Mistake? (2012).
The declaration of rights nobody wanted
Carol Berkin’s account gives Mason the initiative and the room’s exhaustion: after four months of argument and tavern food, “these men wanted to go home. Their bags were packed when suddenly George Mason stands up and he says, ‘I think we should have a statement of the people’s liberties and rights.’ And everybody in the room, you can be sure, groaned” Carol Berkin on The Bill of Rights No One Wanted (2016). Berkin’s explanation for the rejection is that seven state constitutions already opened with such a statement and the delegates saw no need for the federal government to replicate it, believing the phrase “We the People” settled where sovereignty lay.
The elective monarchy
The Mason passage Zadek uses most is his refusal to sign. Reading from Frank Buckley’s The Republic of Virtue: “how prescient he was to Obama’s pen and phone when George Mason said in 1787, ‘We are not indeed constituting a British government, but a more dangerous monarchy, an elective one.’” Zadek’s use of the quotation is consistent across the archive — the modern presidency is the office Mason warned about, and “our American presidency has so much more power than any king in history ever fantasized about having” [[episodes/f_h__buckley_on__the_republic_of_virtue|F.H. Buckley on The Republic of Virtue (2017)]]. Buckley, who teaches at the university named for Mason, agreed that Mason “dropped out” because he expected a monarch at the head and centralized power, and added: “he was right; it just took us 200 years to get there.”
Maladministration
Mason’s other recurring appearance is procedural. At the end of the convention, with impeachable offences narrowed to treason and bribery, Mason objected that the standard was too narrow and proposed “maladministration”; Madison objected that it was too broad; Mason then offered “high crimes and misdemeanors,” which the convention approved Low Tweets and Misdemeanors: The Impeachment Debate Through the Lens of History and the Constitution (2018). Zadek returned to the exchange to ask Healy which side he was on — “are you a George Masonite that let’s lower the standard for impeachment, or are you in the camp that keep the standard what it is but get rid of some of the drama?” Which Impeachment Movie Are You Watching? (2019). Healy’s answer in both episodes was that too much weight is placed on the exchange, since Madison’s convention notes were not published until decades after ratification. Healy also noted Mason among the framers who called impeachment “indispensable.”