JOHN McCain is a warrior. He is plainly enjoying his fight with George W. Bush and the Republican establishment. And he looks forward to fighting Al Gore and the Democrats. But his biggest quarrel, whatever the outcome of these fights, is with James Madison.
For McCain, like many of his voters and journalistic cheerers-on, is fundamentally at odds with the view of politics and government Madison set out in Federalist 10. Madison argued that a free republic would always produce “factions” that would be “united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest.” Economic interest, he argued, would produce many factions, with the greatest danger being the amalgamation of the numerous poor out to seize the property of the relatively few rich. But factions might also coalesce around “different opinions concerning religion, concerning government and many other points,” and even over “the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions.”
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