This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, October 21st, 2010.

I'm Caleb Brown.

We should be careful when we want to improve upon Madison's

Constitution that from William F Connolly author of the new book James Madison

rules America. We spoke following a forum for the book held last week.

Our biggest problem may be in part our tendency to misunderstand the Constitution. I argue in the book James Madison

rules America that Madison literally governs America, the Constitution governs.

And I also think that oftentimes we as citizens and politicians fail to understand or appreciate the notion that the Constitution continues to govern us.

This is in part an effort, in part because of efforts on the part of Woodrow Wilson and other

progressive thinkers Herbert Crowley to

rip our political system from its roots in the Constitution.

And Wilson certainly, Woodrow Wilson certainly and the progressives sought to eclipse the Constitution.

So I purposely use in the book the dramatic title James Madison Rules America

to underscore the point that our politics today still is seriously grounded in the

Constitution and whether we appreciate or understand that or not has actually practical consequences.

And we should appreciate it or understand the way which it has very real, very palpable practical consequences.

Obviously James Madison is dead.

He doesn't rule in that sense.

But the Constitution governs in the most immediate sense, as we were discussing in the panel earlier today, that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans, neither the

president or the Congress governs, both parties at all time are only part of the system.

Lloyd Cutler, a New Wilsonian,

Jimmy Carter's White House Council,

...