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Most job offers – at least in theory – go to the most qualified candidate. This is not always the case with the presidency of the United States, as have discovered many of the president's losers.
Given the choice, Americans tend to move towards a cooler and more exciting face. Charisma and change may be more valuable than on-the-job training, relationships with world leaders or understanding the dynamics of Congress.
It's a weird way to hire the most important person in the world, but it's the system that the United States has come up with and that we've doubled over and over. during its history.
The first two men to have learned this the hard way: John and John Quincy Adams. Father and son were elected president. But voters were ousted from both seats after a term in a 50-year period in which each president served for eight years.
The Adamse had both spent years abroad, advocating for the young country in European capitals. They had more international experience and understanding of the philosophy and political theory behind the untested form of government of the nation than almost anyone else in the United States. And yet, both have been rejected in favor of more charismatic and populist rivals.
This is the central theme of The problem of democracy, a new joint biography of the second and sixth presidents written by Nancy Isenberg and Andrew Burstein. Its subtitle: Presidents Adams Face Personality Cult. A more precise subtitle could indicate that the Adamses were grappling with party politics, as well as the need for elected officials to court and influence public opinion.
The book works more like an intellectual biography than a classic story. Important moments in the careers of both presidents, as well as American history – the role played by John Adams in the drafting of the Declaration of Independence, for example, or John Quincy Adams, who develops the doctrine Monroe who has guided American foreign policy for more than a century – are unfolding quickly. sent in a few sentences or a few paragraphs. Philosophical and political quarrels with contemporaries such as Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, meanwhile, benefit from detailed treatment, with lengthy quotations taken from Adamses' letters and diary entries. There is a whole chapter devoted to authors, including Cicero, who influenced 2 and 6 (borrowing from the way the Bush referred to as 41 and 43).
At the heart of the book are essays and books that 2 and 6 have written throughout their career, fighting the idea of democracy: what form should governments take; what kind of men should serve or even vote; and what margin of safety should exist between the government and popular opinion. These questions were not theoretical. John Adams laid the foundation upon which the US government would be based, and the two men held positions of responsibility and defined politics at a time when standards and customs were in place. In one of the most striking passages that Isenberg and Burstein cite extensively, John Adams warns: "The institutions now created in America will not be fully used until thousands of years ago. It is therefore essential to start from the beginning if they leave badly, they will never come back, unless accident, to the right path. "The two men were skeptical of the masses and generally thought that the government should be left to the experts. They were technocrats before the term existed.
Although the book spends a little too much time between chapters 2 and 6 – at the expense of Federal Hall, the newly built White House and European capitals have also served as ministers – it still does a great job in capturing it has fallen into place during the long career of father and son. By the time John Quincy Adams was in the White House, the vicious men with whom John Adams had beaten and compromised began to attack the more mythical and irreproachable characters of the "Founding Fathers" "which they enjoy today.
At the time of the death of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the United States had agreed on their "civic religion". to build public support around political agendas, their stubborn and idealistic approaches to government have left a lasting imprint on institutions that are regularly tested and challenged 200 years later.
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