Saturday we celebrated “Constitution Day”, the day (September 17, 1787) when the delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed the final document and sent it off to the states for ratification.

There are, of course, a million ways to interpret the meaning of this day. But amidst such a dispiriting presidential election—one with two candidates so manifestly unbecoming of the presidential office that it has left many Americans despairing of our very system of government—I thought it appropriate to recall James Madison’s speech at the Convention from June 6.