Episode Details

We know James Madison the thinker. The architect of the Constitution. The author of the Bill of Rights. But Madison was also a working politician — and a very good one.

Dr. Matthew Goetz, senior historian at the White House Historical Association, joins Katie Crawford-Lackey to look at the side of Madison we tend to skip.  With Jefferson, he built the country's first political party and its first partisan newspaper — then wrote attacks on the Washington administration under a pen name and admitted he found the work grating. 

Goetz also makes the case for Madison's most overlooked chapter: the War of 1812. The first wartime president in American history never passed a sedition law, never arrested a newspaper editor, and never considered postponing the election. You compromise on politics, he believed. Not on principles.

Along the way: a weasel, a mole, and a set of measurements sent to Paris. A deathbed offer Madison turned down. And why the messiest parts of American politics may be exactly what makes the system work.