
The Three Lives of James Madison
Genius, Partisan, President
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Narrated by:
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John H. Mayer
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By:
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Noah Feldman
A sweeping reexamination of the Founding Father who transformed the United States in each of his political "lives" - as a revolutionary thinker, as a partisan political strategist, and as a president
Over the course of his life, James Madison changed the United States three times: First, he designed the Constitution, led the struggle for its adoption and ratification, then drafted the Bill of Rights. As an older, cannier politician, he cofounded the original Republican party, setting the course of American political partisanship. Finally, having pioneered a foreign policy based on economic sanctions, he took the United States into a high-risk conflict, becoming the first wartime president and, despite the odds, winning.
In The Three Lives of James Madison, Noah Feldman offers an intriguing portrait of this elusive genius and the constitutional republic he created - and how both evolved to meet unforeseen challenges. Madison hoped to eradicate partisanship yet found himself giving voice to and institutionalizing the political divide. Madison's lifelong loyalty to Thomas Jefferson led to an irrevocable break with George Washington, hero of the American Revolution. Madison closely collaborated with Alexander Hamilton on the Federalist papers - yet their different visions for the United States left them enemies.
Alliances defined Madison, too. The vivacious Dolley Madison used her social and political talents to win her husband new supporters in Washington - and define the diplomatic customs of the capital's society. Madison's relationship with James Monroe, a mixture of friendship and rivalry, shaped his presidency and the outcome of the War of 1812.
We may be more familiar with other Founding Fathers, but the United States today is in many ways Madisonian in nature. Madison predicted that foreign threats would justify the curtailment of civil liberties. He feared economic inequality and the power of financial markets over politics, believing that government by the people demanded resistance to wealth. Madison was the first Founding Father to recognize the importance of public opinion and the first to understand that the media could function as a safeguard to liberty.
The Three Lives of James Madison is an illuminating biography of the man whose creativity and tenacity gave us America's distinctive form of government. His collaborations, struggles, and contradictions define the United States to this day.
©2017 Noah Feldman (P)2017 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...




















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I’m glad it wasn’t abridged
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A must for anyone interested in the US constitution
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Not a straight biography
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Based on what was presented, however, and this is just one man's opinion, just because Madison applied his executive authority in a manner that promoted his executive position compared to when he was first constructing the Constitution does not definitively imply that he would have argued the founding document should "evolve" with the time. People evolve, but the founding documents, which were constructed to establish a Union, would have never been agreed upon had the authors conclusion of Madison's been his own. Madison was doing his best, as President, to interpret his understanding of executive authority based on constitutional principles, not actively arguing to undermine it at the end.
Seems to me that the conclusion by the authors of this well-constructed work either deliberately or ignorantly promoted modern progressive ideology in their belief that the Constitution "evolves" with the times. Sure there are ways to modify it, but one must get to the root of the language used at the time in which it was ratified to truly understand it and not conclude that it is "living and breathing" as Wilson and the modern left so do today.
Interesting take on one of the founding fathers.
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For this reader the details were mind numbing. That said, many history readers will love this text for its thoroughness.
Yikes the details!
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Solid Biography
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Engaging biography
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“America today is more Madisonian than Jeffersonian or Washingtonian”
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There are other areas of disconnect that bios often address including the Federalists' flirtation with pseudo-monarchy (Britain 2.0) and the Virginians' embrace of partisanship. These bios often take one of a few approaches: (1) hagiographic; (2) condemnatory; or (3) neutral.
Feldman's impressive 2017 bio of James Madison is mostly neutral but largely favorable in dealing with Madison's rather....complicated evolution from strict Constitutionalist to fierce partisan to "flexible" Executive. His views on slaves and slavery are mostly presented as willful or negligent blindness which is a slight mark in his favor as compares to Jefferson in that Madison can't really be accused of the hypocrisy that TJ in light of TJ's extreme rhetoric on liberty compared to his actual conduct. Madison was more concerned about the nuts and bolts of a functioning government and how to correct the problems of the Articles of Confederation and Feldman does an outstanding job of taking us through the Constitutional Convention and the lengths to which Madison went to get the bulk of his vision through.
Madison's spirit of compromise and conciliation takes a sharp turn once the Federalists come into power however. It's interesting to watch Feldman largely defend Madison's rather circuitous route from "unity government" to "f*ck the Federalists." I'm surprised that Lord Acton's famous quote about the corrupting influence of power never makes an appearance as the overall sense throughout Feldman's biography is that Madison felt more and more free to abandon what were previously bedrock principles if they interfered with immediate partisan needs.
Given that Jefferson was a friend and mentor of Madison's it is easy to see how this "evolution" came about given Jefferson's own flexible" view of Presidential authority (Jefferson also had a rather liberal view of veracity which didn't rub off quite as much on Madison, thankfully). Regardless, it's interesting to see both the similarities in Jefferson and Madison's approaches to Constitutional interpretation and governance and their differences in how they articulated them. Jefferson was a bomb-thrower while Madison was more measured--which makes "angry Madison" amusing to read.
The other aspects of Feldman's bio are well done, including a very engaging and sympathetic portrait of Dolly Madison. Madison's post-presidential life is given criminally short shrift, however and the book covers the last 20 years of his life almost as an afterthought.
While Feldman does rightfully place Madison in the upper pantheon of founding fathers and looks at his shifting positions regarding Executive vs Legislative vs Judicial authority favorably, he doesn't uniformly praise nor uniformly condemn Madison. The Founders weren't gods (or angels) and Feldman doesn't try to portray Madison as one. He places him within the context of his time and that's what makes this an outstanding and worthwhile history.
Nothing quite so fine as Virginian hypocrisy
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Overall, this depiction of the Father of the Constitution is presented in a fair and consistent manner. While the bookends of Madison's life are lacking, particularly post-presidency, Feldman pays careful attention to the defining moments in this Founders career. One would expect a detailed analysis of the formation of the Constitution and Feldman accomplishes this quite well. When reaching Madison's presidency, the story tends to widen and include others such as Jefferson and Monroe in such a way that the reader might tend to forget the book is about Madison. This really begins around the foreign policy of Madison in his "second political life" and continues all the way through the War of 1812 near the end of his presidency. At the end of his professional career, Feldman does leave the reader thirsty for more and does not provide much in terms of a proper reflection on the life of such an important figure.
This reader left the book satisfied, yet feeling the pull to look elsewhere to find additional information, if not to the primary sources themselves.
Compartmentalizing the Father of the Constitution
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