The real James Madison

George F. Will [“Ted Cruz, winning with a Madisonian touch,” op-ed, Aug. 2] was assuredly correct when he described James Madison as the most “intellectually formidable Founder,” regarding his distinction as the father of our Constitution. In extolling his adherence to a set of enumerated powers, however, Mr. Will becomes something of a cafeteria constitutionalist, like most in the tea party, as it was Mr. Madison himself who nurtured greatly the concept of “implied” powers.

 In the third volume of his definitive biography of our fourth president, Irving Brant attributed to Madison the “proposal that, to make the government adequate to ‘common defense, security of liberty and general welfare,’ Congress have power ‘to legislate in all cases to which the separate states are incompetent.’ ” Such “incompetence,” one can reasonably argue is why we now have Social Security, Medicare and a new health-care law.

 In deference to Mr. Will, later in life Madison would evolve into a greater devotee to the enumerated powers, but it would be his own words and philosophies from the Constitutional Convention of 1787 that would come back to haunt him. One can’t help but smirk a little as well, given the so-called “oppression” of our federal government, that the impetus for the creation of our sacred document was, according to Mr. Brant, in part the “tyranny of the states” and that the Founding Fathers would always regard the states only as, in their words, “subordinately useful.”

 Joe Palka, Gaithersburg