The revelation of the prophet Saint James

James Madison (1751-1836), commonly hailed as "the Father of our Constitution" (and fourth president of the United States, 1809-1817), in 1793 saw ahead two hundred years and warned against the rise of the Bush administration:

In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department....War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war, a physical force is to be created; and it is the executive will which is to direct it. In war, the public treasures are to be unlocked; and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them....It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered, and it is the executive brow they are to encircle. The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast—ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable or venial love of fame—are all in conspiracy against the desire [for] and duty of peace.

I am indebted to Anthony Lewis for quoting Madison in his review of Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush, by Robert Draper (Illustrated. 463 pp. Free Press. $28) and The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration, by Jack Goldsmith (256 pp. W. W. Norton & Company. $25.95) in the November 4 issue of The New York Times Book Review.