Monday, Jul. 06, 1987

Living

By WALTER SHAPIRO

THE BICENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY done in Convention . . . the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth ARTICLE VII LIVING What If TV Had Been There? Imagining how the framers might fare in the media age

James Madison hated the little microphone clipped to his waistcoat, he hated the way the cameramen sniggered at his height, and he hated talking in 20- second sound bites. But he was politician enough to recognize the importance of Good Morning, 13 Sovereign States. Two minutes to explain the Virginia Plan, a few banal questions, and the ordeal would be over. Madison remembered his instructions: no Locke, no Montesquieu, no Plutarch. Just simple declarative sentences, a confident smile and don't fiddle with your wig. "Jimmy, all you got to do is emote," his media consultant had told him. "Flash those baby blues at the camera, and the dollies back home will eat it right up."

But the opening question was about as welcome as an attack of gout. "Mr. Madison," the TV interviewer purred, "how do you react to Patrick Henry's press conference this morning charging that the convention has exceeded its instructions and, quote, 'is hell-bent on tyranny.' " Remain calm, smile, take it in stride. "All citizens of our great state, of course, respect the views of Mr. Henry," Madison said slowly. "But sometimes Pat gets a little too fond of his own rhetoric. To paraphrase my esteemed fellow Virginian: Give me Constitution or give me chaos."

Leaving the TV studio, Madison braced himself for the gauntlet of demonstrators and special pleaders. He strode quickly past the suffragists with their banner: THE RITES OF MAN ARE WRONGS FOR WOMEN. He shook off two business lobbyists, easily identifiable by their soft Venetian boots, who wanted the Constitution specifically to exempt the game of rounders from the interstate commerce clause. Shy, soft-spoken and constantly embarrassed by his own meager war record, Madison found a delegation of Revolutionary War veterans harder to ignore. Confronted with half a dozen strapping backwoodsmen with rum on their breath and Valley Forge on their lips, he reluctantly agreed to support their fight to make all pensions forever exempt from taxation.

Back at his boardinghouse, Madison slipped off his boots and scanned the papers. Most alarming was a headline in the Pennsylvania Gazette: VIRGINIA PLAN TO BE SCUTTLED AS SMALL STATES BALK. Madison recalled seeing George Washington in deep conversation with two reporters at Robert Morris' party last night. Was Garrulous George the "influential Virginian" who was "privately pressing for compromise"? Madison turned to the editorial page. There George Shrill, his favorite neoroyalist columnist, was quoting Thucydides in the original Greek to argue that the 13 states needed the firm hand of a minor German princeling as monarch to quell "the unseemly clamor of mobocracy." A gossip item on the entertainment page provided Madison with his only chuckle of the morning: a Harrisburg film producer claimed to have signed Ben Franklin to portray God in an upcoming comedy.

Madison was reminded that his literary agent had come down from New York. Though he loathed the power lunch scene at Duke Zwilling's Tavern, Madison felt compelled to put on a good show. Speedy Lorenz had brought along a top editor from Rumpole House to discuss publication of Madison's proposed Essays on Federalism. The protocols of a proper business meal were followed scrupulously: aimless discussion of the New York theater season (all British imports), summer houses (expensive) and the servant problem (dire) until coffee was mercifully served. Only then did the editor, Michael Lordover, come to the point: "Jim, this isn't the big book you need at this point in your career. Sure we could publish it, and maybe it would make back a modest advance. But Speedy tells me you've also been keeping a secret diary of the convention. Now that's the book I really want. A tell-all confessional filled with political intrigue and maybe a few blonds. I even have a title: A Confederacy of Dunces."

After that ego-deflating lunch, the tumult of the convention was a relief. As Madison took his front-row seat with the Virginia delegation, a page handed him a hastily scrawled note from Roger Sherman of Connecticut: "We need to talk." This could be the break in the deadlock that Madison was hoping for; Sherman was the last of the old-time New England bosses. But getting through the clogged aisles to the Connecticut delegation on the other side of Independence Hall was a nightmare. A live-TV crew dogged Madison's every step as Reporter Don Samuelson shouted questions: "Jim, are you going to meet with Ben Franklin? Are you releasing the big-state delegates? Are you conceding you don't have the votes? We are tracking James Madison as a big story is breaking on the convention floor."

Ten minutes and nine "no comments" later, Madison was literally closeted with Sherman in a custodial storage area behind the rostrum. At 66, the rugged, rough-hewn Sherman, who had never worn a wig in his life, was not a man to mince words. "James," he said, his foot resting on a slops bucket, "we can't write a Constitution in this bedlam. Hell, every time I belch, I discover I'm on live TV. Enough of this posturing and strutting, I'm going home to New Haven."

Madison scanned Sherman's pockmarked face looking for an opening. "But Roger," he pleaded, "I thought you were working on a compromise. Some arrangement where the small states would have equal footing in the upper chamber of the legislature." Sherman shook his gray head sadly. "Yeah, James, I tried. But I'm old enough to know that politics is the art of the possible. There are just too many pressure groups, too many cameras, too much openness, too much damn democracy to make this thing work." Madison started to object, but Sherman cut him off. "Cheer up, James," he said. "The Articles of Confederation ain't that bad."

The so-called Constitutional Convention adjourned four days later, after the networks announced that they were scrapping live coverage in exchange for ten-minute nightly summaries of the proceedings at 11:30. Madison's diaries, renamed Federalist Follies, topped the best-seller list for 1788.