John Adams

The Presidents Adams, John and John Quincy, knew that the powerful in government were elitists, no matter what they called themselves.

There were those, like Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson and many of their fellow southerners, who skillfully employed a rhetoric that concealed their class interests. There were those in the Adamses’ New England who dismissed all social inferiors without apology. The two Adamses may have been snobs in their own way but they hated all forms of deception and intimidation, subtle or direct, regardless of its origin. They hated the fact that American politics thrived on the embellishment of larger-than-life personalities as “men of the people”. To the endless frustration of the father and the son, each spent the greater part of his political career facing the charge of holding a dangerous degree of elitist sympathy. Whether guilty or not, they took a perverse pride in refusing to court public opinion through dishonest means – which made them poor politicians.

Nor were the Presidents Adams ever sanguine about the two-party system, […]