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Happy Birthday, James Madison!

Today would be the 260th birthday of the 4th American president, James Madison. Long honored as the “Father of the Constitution” for his role at the Federal Convention of 1787, Madison is also regarded as the most thoughtful and creative constitutional theorist of his generation. This reputation owes much to his celebrated contributions to The Federalist, the set of essays that he wrote with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay in support of the Constitution. Two of these essays, the 10th and 51st, are widely viewed as paradigmatic statements of the general theory of the Constitution.

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The President Doth Gesture Too Much

Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com. In the article below he looks at Obama’s gestures. See Lim’s previous OUPblogs here.

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