By the Maui Curmudgeon (4th in a 43-part series)

How do the U.S. Presidents stack up? I thought I’d find ou by reading biographies of all 43 presidents, in the order of their administrations. Here are briefly the pros and cons of my discoveries, the interesting bits, and how I’d rank him. For comparison, I give you the 1982 Murrary-Blessing ranking, a survey of hundreds of leading historians who ranked each president by number. This survey is the gold standard of presidential rankings and is most cited when this kind of thing needs bringing up in media.

JAMES MADISON: 1809-1817~ 4th U.S. President

Without question, James Madison was the smallest person ever to be president - about 5 foot tall and 100 pounds. He distinguished himself in battle during the Revolutionary War. He was a great writer - penning many of the Federalist papers (numbers 10 and 11 are considered works of political genius). In many ways, Madison grew to be a carbon copy of Jefferson, both good and ill.

Madison was Jefferson’s secretary of state for eight years. The culmination of that effort was a treaty that Madison bargained for in Europe. It was so embarrassingly bad that Jefferson refused to present it to the Senate for consideration.

While Jefferson was a hypocrite, writing one philosophy and practicing another, Madison was a turncoat. At first, he was indeed a Federalist and loyal Washington supporter in the 1780’s, which is why he worked closely with the uber-federalist Alexander Hamilton, to produce the Federalist papers. By the time he served Jefferson 20 years later, and became president himself, he was the ultimate Republican, writing screeds against centralized excutive power, power he abused during his presidency. And, like Jefferson, he died deeply in debt.

THE GOOD

• Brilliant protector of the separation of church and state.
• Governor of Virginia four times, and wildly popular each time.
• Firm believer that the U.S. could never go to war without a declaration of war from the Congress.
• Lucky as hell in politics and war.

THE BAD

• Switched sides on several important causes more than once during his life, including states rights and freedom of speech.
• Managed to get the U.S. into a devastatingly bad war - the War of 1812 - in which Washington, DC was burned.
• An appallingly bad wartime leader. Many historians write about the “wild strokes of luck” and “sheer confluence of misguided events” which were the only thing to save the U.S. from re-entering colonial status with Britain after the war.
• Never even questioned the rights of southern whites to own other human beings.

INTERESTING BITS

Returned to the capital within hours of the British setting it on fire, in what his Secretary of State (and Madison’s successor) James Monroe said was what saved the republic “from unthinkable degradation.”

Murray-Blessing Rating: #14

My Score: 60%

Interesting Reading:

• The Last of the Fathers: James Madison & The Republican Legacy by Drew McCoy
• James Madison: (The American Presidents Series) by Garry Wills