Madison is perhaps the best example of an early American politician whose influence is exaggerated in popular and academic history. Because of the existence of an expensive, government-sponsored Madison papers project, and because of the fact that he helped author The Federalist, it is very convenient to study his writings. For scholars uninterested in digging into the context of Madison’s work, the ease of teasing out his opinions poses a fatal temptation to equate Madison’s ideas with those of "the Founders."But how representative of the Philadelphia Convention was Madison, really? He was the chief author of the Virginia Plan, which would have created a national, in the place of the old federal, government. In other words, where the states’ role had been primary from 1775 to 1787, Madison wanted to reduce them to a secondary status and make the central government primary.
To that end, he proposed in the Virginia Plan to give Congress general legislative authority and to empower the national judiciary to hear any case that might cause friction among the states, to give the Congress a veto over state laws, to empower the national government to use the military against the states, and to eliminate the states’ accustomed role in selecting members of Congress.
and Mr. Franck, Meet Mr. Randolph
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