James Madison : A Life Reconsidered

A lesson that one can learn from James Madison is this: It is more about the unforeseen circumstances that define the Presidency than the man himself.

Madison was someone who was the best prepared for the Presidency. He helped to make the Constitution, not to mention the numerous founding laws established in his home state of Virginia. Yet, his presidency is best remembered for a war that the US would rather forget: the War of 1812.

It was a war that we had no right in fighting. We did not have much of a navy, as we only has a few ships, where as Britain's numbered in the thousands. England had one of the best armies in the world, we had a fighting force that could charitibly be called a militia. This went about a good as you can expect, with the US invading Canada three times, and failing EVERY time. Our capitol was also burned to the ground. A major victory that did result for us was the Battle of Fort McHenry, which was what helped make the Star Spangled Banner. The only real victory was the Battle of New Orleans, which we won more to problems on the British side than anything else.

I personally think this was a war we lost.The only thing that we got out of it was the portrait of George Washington, which we would have had anyway had we not declared war. The Star Spangled Banner was made as our National Anthem, but that was only done in the 1930's, and it was based on the tune of a popular BRITISH drinking song. Andrew Jackson also used his victory at New Orleans to catapult him to the Presidency, and depending on who you ask, that was not such a good thing. This was a war that, while it was not wanted, it was inevitable that it would occur, and it was just pure happenstance that it should happen during Madison's presidency. I think that this is also a reminder that there are times where foreign issues cannot be solved with diplomacy, despite our best intentions.

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This is a book that, as I was reading, I could not help but wonder would have been better served had it been written by a more talented author. A good author should write a biography with the idea of some kind of theme in mind. With George Washington, Joseph J. Ellis showed us a man who learned to sacrifice his own personal glory and values for his country. With John Adams, David McCullough displayed a man who was professionally prepared for the political job, but whose personal faults got him into trouble multiple times. Lynn Cheney shows us that James Madison has...well I'm not really sure what he has, because Cheney does not really write in terms of any kind of theme or philosophical idea. She does the more journalistic style of writing, where one event happens, then another followed by another. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but I was hoping for a more thorough study of the man, rather than the events going on around him.

This bleeds over into the politics of the book. Cheney's style of writing does not lend itself well to this section of the book either, the lack of the ability to provide any kind of context of what is happening. Any other author would have provided small sections about the different things Madison was involved with debating, providing an explanation about why this was so important for the time, what the document or proposal was, and after the debate, what it would turn into. Cheney, however, does not do this, instead going on and on about who said what with little context overall. She may name a particular section or two that was being debated, but this leaves me feeling lost. Yes, they are debating Section 2 of the Constitution, but Cheney never states what the proposed section actually says, even in a brief summary, leaving the political process these people went to get the Section 2 we have today feeling hollow and underdeveloped. Cheney's writing makes for dull reading as we see one person stand up and argue something, and then another person stand up and argue something else with how Madison felt about it either being given less focus than I would have liked, or being lost in the journalistic prose entirely.

This lends to a book that is well researched, but at times left me feeling like someone writing a newspaper article of various political events, rather than a study of a president. This leads me to say that I am glad I got this as a library book, because I will not be sorry to when I have to see it go. I give it a three out of five. Just because something is well researched does not mean it can be a interesting narrative.

I really wanted to like this book, but the greatest drawback was the writing. Lots of unreferenced pronouns (eg, “he said it to him”), lack of context and background, jumps in time that are not pointed out and much more. I realize that this is a difficult book to write with a huge cast of characters and she does tell the story of Madison, but not in a very interesting way.