Democratic-Republican · 1809–1817
James Madison
Constitutional architect. A wartime presidency that ended by chartering a national bank.
James Madison was president 1809–1817. The party color on the chart is Democratic-Republican. Early presidents are not forced into today’s party names. The placement note is: Constitutional architect. A wartime presidency that ended by chartering a national bank.
The dot is economics +10 and authority +8. That is near the middle on economics. The other axis sits near the middle. Color and place are allowed to disagree. Theodore Roosevelt sits left of Grover Cleveland on economics.
What was said, and what the administration did, are filed separately. Said: The Constitution he had written, and a republic that would not be a European power. Done: He took the country into the War of 1812 and signed a national bank he had once opposed. Where those two sentences pull apart, the dot follows the governing record, not the slogan.
The nearest other presidents on these two numbers are James A. Garfield (1881, +8 / +6) and Zachary Taylor (1849–1850, +8 / +12). A small distance can join people who would have disliked each other. The chart is a compression, not a claim that they were alike.
Presidents are not placed with the Voteview roll-call score used for the current Congress. Two axes cannot carry a war, a court, a tariff, and a civil-rights record as separate facts.