This writer’s admiration for James Madison, whose birthday this week (March 16) in 1751 is arguably the most distressingly unobserved birthday in our history, stems from his role in solving the great paradox that America faced at the end of the American Revolution — a paradox that never before in history had been solved, and one that looked particularly daunting in a nation of 13 very different states spread over an extended territory.
The paradox was this: America had rebelled against Great Britain because it was fed up with being governed by a powerful central authority located so far away — a 3,000-mile Atlantic ocean away — that this authority was neither familiar with, nor beholden to, the concerns of the people it was supposed to govern. “No taxation without representation,” the American Revolution’s rallying cry, was really another way of saying, “No government that is out of touch with the local interests of the people.”
And yet, not five years after the war was won, America’s leaders realized that only a more powerful central government could prevent their new nation from dissolving into 13 squabbling states, each bent on protecting its own interests at the expense of the national welfare. What’s more, given the fact this nation would only grow larger as Americans headed west, such a central authority would inevitably lose its local flavor and likely become, like King George III and the British Parliament, “out of touch.”
Thus Madison and his fellow Founding Fathers faced a daunting task at the Constitutional Convention held in Philadelphia in 1787. In a nation of ever-increasing size, they had to create a central government strong enough to effectively govern this expanding nation, but not so strong or geographically distant that the American people would reject it for being a carbon copy of the British government they had recently renounced.
Some 228 years later we can only marvel at the ways they met this challenge. First, the Constitution they created divided power between the central government and state and local governments that were very familiar with local concerns. Second, power was also divided among several branches of the central government — thus preventing one branch from becoming so powerful it threatened the other branches. Third, they mandated frequent elections so the people could keep a tight rein on their elected officials. Fourth, they added a Bill of Rights spelling out rights and protections the government could never violate, and they included a judiciary to enforce those rights and protections.
It was a collective triumph, but one man wrote the plan on which the Constitution is based, and one man provided the essential leadership required to get it approved and ratified — this week’s birthday boy, James Madison.
