The Constitution and America's Destiny

David Brian Robertson is Professor of Political Science and Fellow in the Public Policy Research Center at the University of Missouri, St Louis. He is the author of Capital, Labor, and State: The Battle for American Labor Markets from the Civil War to the New Deal, The Development of American Public Policy: The Structure of Policy Restraint (with Dennis R. Judd), numerous journal articles, and editor of Loss of Confidence: Politics and Policy in the 1970s. He is Associate Editor of the Journal of Policy History and he edits CLIO, the newsletter of the Politics and History section of the American Political Science Association. Professor Robertson has received the Governor's, Chancellor's, and Emerson Electric Awards for Teaching Excellence. He is the political analyst for KSDK Television (NBC in St Louis) and is a frequently quoted political observer.

• 1. Politics and the constitution; 2. The policy crisis of the 1780s; 3. James Madison's strategy for the constitutional convention; 4. The political landscape of the constitutional convention; 5. Who governs? Constituting policy agency; 6. What can be governed? Constituting policy authority; 7. How is the nation governed? Constituting the policy process; 8. Our inheritance: the constitution and American politics.

"Madison was the American Moses, creating a People by handing down Commandments. But Madison was a patriarch with many rivals and, although he had a vision, he could not inscribe on stone exactly what he thought would govern his imperfect people. As David Robertson deftly shows, Madison's vision nonetheless guided him through the thicket of deliberations upon what became the American Constitution. Contrasting this vision with what others would call preferences, Robertson persuasively contends that Madison strongly influenced the Constitutional Convention precisely because he could see beyond the details and nuances of the moment." Richard Bensel, Cornell University