The Littlest President

I had this idea, a while ago, that the first four presidents--Founding Father presidents--could easily be compared to the Beatles. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson are obviously the Lennon-McCartney of the group; they do a lot of good work together, they love each other, fight a bunch, then make up. George Washington is George Harrison; quiet, underrated.

That, of course, means that James Madison is Ringo. Because he's short. And fourth.

This is unfair. Madison does some pretty incredible things both before he's president and later during his presidency. He writes a third of the Federalist Papers. He's the Father of the Bill of Rights. He's as insistent as Jefferson--maybe even more so--about the separation of church and state (and as Garry Wills points out, organized religion hasn't flourished nearly as well in any other industrialized country as it has in the US). He gets the country through its first war ever, and in doing so, sets it on its way to eventual world power.

Of course, to do so, he has to reverse his course on almost everything. But, as Wills points out pretty often, consistency isn't his strong point, and several times, one of Madison's faults will turn out to be his strong suit (and vice versa).

But, as Wills also points out, he's got the problem of following those other three guys. He's never going to crack the top ten. And even though Ringo wrote some decent songs ("Don't Pass Me By" comes to mind), he's always going to be overshadowed by John, Paul, and George (Harrison, not Washington).