He told them a story — “the little baby in the cradle,” as a student would call it. “He would tell us that one day we might say the baby would be a t… - Robert A. Caro

they mistrusted those who were not educated or well-born or well-to-do. More specifically, they feared the people’s power because, possessing, and esteeming, property, they wanted the rights of property protected against those who did not possess it. In the notes he made for a speech in the Constitutional Convention, James Madison wrote of the “real or supposed difference of interests” between “the rich and poor” — “those who will labor under all the hardships of life, and secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of its blessings” — and of the fact that over the ages to come the latter would come to outnumber the former. “According to the equal laws of suffrage, the power will slide into the hands of the latter,” he noted. “Symptoms, of a leveling spirit, as we have understood, have sufficiently appeared in certain quarters to give notice of the future danger.” But the Framers feared the people’s power also because they hated tyranny, and they knew there could be a tyranny of the people as well as the tyranny of a King, particularly in a system designed so that, in many ways, the majority ruled. “Liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as by the abuses of power,” Madison wrote. These abuses were more likely because the emotions of men in the mass ran high and fast, they were “liable to err … from fickleness and passion,” and “the major interest might under sudden impulses be tempted to commit injustice on the minority.” So the Framers wanted to check and restrain not only the people’s rulers, but the people; they wanted to erect what Madison called “a necessary fence” against the majority will. To create such a fence, they decided that the Congress would have not one house but two, and that while the lower house would be designed to reflect the popular will, that would not be the purpose of the upper house. How, Madison asked, is “the future danger” — the danger of “a leveling spirit” — “to be guarded against on republican principles? How is th

And, in fact, had Johnson’s plan succeeded, in many ways it would indeed have been “just the way it was.

Hospitality has always been a potent political weapon. Moses used it like a master. Coupled with his overpowering personality, a buffet often did as much for a proposal as a bribe.