A Politician Thinking: The Creative Mind of James Madison by Jack N. Rakove

Abstract

Reviewed by: A Politician Thinking: The Creative Mind of James Madison by Jack N. Rakove Jessica Choppin Roney, Whitney Martinko, and Katlyn Marie Carter (bio) A Politician Thinking: The Creative Mind of James Madison. By Jack N. Rakove. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2017. Pp. 226. Cloth, $29.95.) In Jack N. Rakove's new book on James Madison, readers are promised insight not so much into Madison's thought, but into his way of thinking. The effort to explore how Madison thought, argued, and evolved provides a welcome intervention in the scholarship of a relatively lesser-studied founder. Rakove stresses Madison's unique status as a political thinker who wrote strikingly little "for publication or persuasion." (5) Throughout the book, Rakove draws upon Madison's correspondence and notes to show how his ideas developed over time. For example, a letter to Caleb Wallace in the wake of Madison's battle against the religious assessment bill and in favor of the Bill for Religious Freedom in Virginia was "the first occasion on which [he] wrote systematically about the tenor of republican government in the states" (62). When exploring Madison's shifting thought on the necessity of a Bill of Rights, Rakove cites letters exchanged between Madison and Jefferson between 1787 and 1789. "In the annals of American history—and indeed in the realm of global constitutional history—few if any exchanges have ever attained a comparable level of political importance and analytical sophistication" (120). Rakove focuses primarily on the period from 1776 to 1801, when he says Madison's tenure as a "constitutional thinker" ended (186). During this period, Madison's questions and concerns were derived from immediate events that posed specific problems. The book sets out to show [End Page 555] how "his ideas evolved out of his deep immersion in deliberations and decisions, both at the state and national levels of revolutionary governance" (15). In Rakove's telling, we see Madison as a problem-solver trying to balance "empirical and theorizing components" (15). He argues Madison's purpose when writing was generally to identify "a problem that he felt he first had to solve rather than articulating an argument meant to persuade others" (112). This approach leads Rakove repeatedly to emphasize that "Madison's political thinking … was less about rhetoric than analysis" (15); his questions were "genuine, not merely rhetorical" (72) or "more analytical than rhetorical" (88). His answers were "substantive, not rhetorical" (17). When Rakove does focus on Madison's published writing, it is to dissect the way in which he went about answering questions and constructing arguments. Focusing on his notable Federalist essays, Rakove elucidates Madison's "way of thinking like a constitution," as he puts it (146). Thinking like a constitution entailed establishing clear definitions of key terms, examining "an array of applied or potential meanings" for those terms based on practice, and, finally, identifying "the real forces that animate political action" (146). It was this fusion of pragmatic, experiential evidence with more abstract theoretical reasoning that was the source of Madison's creativity. Through this emphasis on the process of Madison's thinking, rather than the final product of his thought, Rakove provides a new perspective on what Gordon Wood called "the James Madison problem": how to reconcile the Madison of the 1780s with the Madison of the 1790s (153). Rakove's approach suggests that there are perhaps not as many discrepancies as we might think; rather, there was a shifting of emphasis and changing of definitions. First, Rakove shows how Madison in the 1780s was centrally concerned with the legislative branch and particularly the way in which deliberation could best be facilitated. His focus on the legislature went beyond the institution itself to question how it would relate to "the people themselves" (73). This desire to create a generative and sound deliberative process produced some of Madison's most innovative ideas. Rakove suggests that Madison was less interested in the abstract theory of separation of powers than in how to guarantee a balance of powers. In the 1790s after the Bank Bill and the Neutrality Proclamation, Madison's attention shifted to the executive as a central concern. As Madison gained a new appreciation...