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"According to a classic story of American political development, the Framers created a certain kind of presidency because they appreciated the dangers of demagogy, a danger they had learned from their reading of antiquity and from their experience in the state governments. Thus the Framers did not envision a president who represents the people but instead created a president who serves as a check on the people's representatives in Congress. Furthermore, this arrangement was deliberately and fundamentally transformed by the Progressives, who were impatient with the counter-majoritarian features of constitutional design and wished to hitch policy reform to presidential leadership. While scholars disagree as to whether this change with respect to the idea of presidential representation was good or bad, the presumption that there was change is a central pillar in the literature on the modern presidency. The Idea of Presidential Representation challenges this story. In place of a before and after moment of transformation, Jeremy D. Bailey argues the evidence shows that presidential representation has long been contested and remains unsettled. He traces the history of the debate over representation from the Convention of 1787 to the disputes over the Twelfth and Twenty-second Amendments to the question of superdelegates in the wake of the 2016 election. The result is a landmark work of political science that promises to redefine the conversation for decades to come"--

"This book presents a provocative account of James Madison's political thought by focusing on Madison's lifelong encounter with the enduring problem of constitutional imperfection. In particular, it emphasizes Madison's alliance with Thomas Jefferson, liberating it from those long-standing accounts of Madisonian constitutionalism that emphasize deliberation by elites and constitutional veneration. Contrary to much of the scholarship, this book shows that Madison was aware of the limits of the inventions of political science and held a far more subtle understanding of the possibility of constitutional government than has been recognized. By repositioning Madison as closer to Jefferson and the Revolution of 1800, this book offers a reinterpretation of one of the central figures of the early republic"--

This article considers the theory of presidential representation by examining its development from 1800 to 1864. In particular, it returns to the critics ofThomasJefferson,AndrewJackson, andAbrahamLincoln and presents new evidence that the concept of presidential representation not only remained contested throughout this period but also grew more entangled with rival claims of representation and alternative arguments for executive power. By exploring the early development of the theory of presidential representation, the article contributes to the ongoing scholarly task of classifying arguments about the foundations of executive power and attempts to link literatures regarding the constitutional and political sources of presidential power.