The View from 1787

Judging the Trump candidacy by Madison’s standards is worthwhile, for two reasons. First, some of Trump’s biggest fans consider themselves constitutionalists—and nobody was more important in the design, ratification, and defense of the Constitution than Madison. For 30 years, from 1787 until 1817, he was at the center of every constitutional debate, and his views usually prevailed.

Second, Madison would not be unsympathetic to Trump’s supporters; they feel like politicians are unresponsive to their interests, and Madison had similar concerns. As he writes in “Vices of the Political System of the United States,” “Representative appointments are sought from 3 motives. 1. ambition. 2. personal interest. 3. public good. Unhappily the two first are proved by experience to be most prevalent.” This speaks directly to the anxieties of Trump backers—for here Madison worries about a government taken over by special interests, who pursue their own agendas against the public good.

Madison thought something like this was happening in the 1790s. He was the first to fight the Hamiltonian system of public finance, which he believed granted unwarranted bounties to the moneyed class—and, much worse, a permanent position of power—at the expense of the public at large. He and Thomas Jefferson worked tirelessly through the decade to cleanse the government of the factions that they thought had corrupted its republican character.

So Madison is an authority to be taken seriously by constitutional conservatives worried about the power of special interests. Trump claims to be the avatar of these voters. What would Madison think?

Regarding Trump’s character and background, Madison would not believe him fit for the highest office. The real estate mogul has few analogues in the history of American politics, but a reasonable approximation is Andrew Jackson. The brash, temperamental populist finished first in the presidential balloting in 1824, ahead of John Quincy Adams, William H. Crawford, and Henry Clay. No candidate won an electoral majority, which meant that the House of Representatives was tasked with selecting a president from the top three finishers. Clay, having finished fourth, was excluded from the contest, but as speaker of the House he held the power to name the new president. On his way back to Washington from Kentucky, he visited Madison at Montpelier. Clay—long an admirer of Madison—inquired what the retired statesman thought he should do, and Madison advised not picking Jackson. At Monticello, Jefferson gave Clay similar counsel.

Madison would have less regard for Trump. The mogul’s campaign is half populist crusade, half insult-comic shtick, but Madison thought that one virtue of representative government was its ability to elevate the political discourse. In Federalist 10 he writes that our system can “refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations.” Trump is the antithesis of these ideal statesmen the Framers hoped would staff the government. Madison himself notes that “enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm,” but this is hardly reason to select as president somebody as benighted as Trump.

Madison would, moreover, likely be unimpressed by Trump’s wealth. In the 1780s and ’90s, speculative activity had reached a frenzied state, and many a man had amassed himself a large fortune. Madison thought that this demonstrated neither virtue nor industry. In a debate at the Constitutional Convention over whether certain offices should require their holders own property, Madison argued that holding property was “no certain evidence of real wealth. Many enjoyed them to a great extent who were more in debt than they were worth. The unjust laws of the States had proceeded more from this class of men, than any others. It had often happened that men who had acquired landed property on credit, got into the Legislatures with a view of promoting an unjust protection (against) their Creditors.” What might Madison think of the “real wealth” of Trump, who inherited a fortune from his father and whose companies have had to declare multiple bankruptcies?

Madison might be sympathetic to the populist anger that is spreading across the country, but he would probably instruct us to be mindful of the separation of government powers. So often, advocates for Trump complain about “the establishment,” in particular pointing fingers at the failure of congressional Republicans to follow through on their promises. Fair enough, but what exactly is the president supposed to do about that? As Madison argues in Federalist 51, our system of government gives “to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack.” That’s checks and balances in a nutshell: The president might want to influence Congress, but Congress often has the will and power to resist.

How then is somebody like Trump going to bring Congress back to decency? He can use moral suasion and endeavor to bring public pressure to bear. But this is a grossly inefficient approach. After all, Congress itself is an elective institution. If conservatives are so aghast at congressional misbehavior, why pour so much time and attention into presidential politics? Why not instead redouble efforts to fill the legislature with leaders who will put the public interest ahead of ambition and personal interests?

Separation of powers brings us back to the matter of Trump’s qualifications for office. People without political experience who run for president inevitably argue that what government needs is somebody with business acumen. But the premise of this claim is problematic, for government is quite unlike business. Employees and owners of a business are in a shared quest for profits, which they hope will grow every year. On the other hand, our constitutional system explicitly sets up interbranch rivalries that have no correspondence with the business world, and each branch competes for political power, which is of a fixed and finite amount. The two realms are worlds apart, so what sense does it make to elect as president a businessman with no background in the peculiarities of our system?

In sum, conservatives certainly have good reasons to be frustrated by the status quo in American politics, but they would do well to take to heart the wisdom of the Father of the Constitution. Madison would appreciate how aggravated voters are—in the 1790s, he himself felt like the government was being hijacked by an interested faction—but he would never support for president a meanspirited, inexperienced demagogue such as Donald Trump.

Jay Cost is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard and the author of A Republic No More: Big Government and the Rise of American Political Corruption.