Its great to see a full house everyone is excited about john adams. Today we will be talking about john adams and his important career. The vanguard of the revolution, the earliest american diplomat, primary trainer of the massachusetts constitution, really remarkable man. Couldnt have two better offers to talk about him. First want to say we have some amazing programs coming up. You should look at the listings we have one for members only on the congressional term limits and we have programs on everything ranging from the constitutionalism of the civil war and on and on so please check out this program to see what is coming up. And also if you are interested in becoming a member please visit the table right outside of the theater and again we are a little late starting so ive askei wouldask right now everyos violence your cell phone and so without further ado we are going to be talking about two books today. Both of them touch on his accounts of aristocracy. First we have t the fear of american oligarchy and then the one, the few and many so please give a Constitution Center welcome. [applause] thank you for being here im excited for the conversation and i must confess up front it is shaped in an inappropriate expedition with a High School Student with the musical 1776 which famously at one point describes john adams as obnoxious and disliked so i just want to start with you. Can you tell us a little bit about him as a person and how he compared to the other founders . Guest i suppose the impression is better than from hamilton that leads him out entirely. The only mentions of him are making fun of him. I come from a study of the perspective of a political scientist and what brought me was the recognition that he wasnt just a founding father figure who also had some ideas about politics. He was Something Like a political scientist in his own time. He was an analytical, political and social thinker. I came to think john adams deserved to be thought of among what we think of as the first great political and social thinkers in history. Those that you might study in college today even 20th century like w. E. B. Du boise, john dewey, those that are thought of as the Big Questions in society and politics. John adams deserves to be thought of in that way and not just as a historical figure or statesman. Adams really did. The major work of the Political Science is the sense of the american constitution and it was probably the most systematic treatment ever written by an american. We have other Founding Fathers like James Madison and Alexander Hamilton that wrote the federalist papers that are also impressive but john adams worked more than any other figure in time and was a political scientist. That is what engaged my interest. Host you described john adams as most gripped by the past. We talk about john adams as a scientist. What about as a practical historian of sorts . Just to go doethis began very early and actually goes out of interest in law. He begins of course as a lawyer and it is often said that a great many of our Founding Fathers were more years and that is technically true. Some of them were lawyers and businessmen and something else. John adams in his career a was a very hardworking lawyer and when he defended the soldiers in the boston massacre he was already by that time the leading attorney in massachusetts, the role that he held until he got in public life in the continental congress. As a lawyer, he was determined very early to master the fields of law including the institute so he would learn about the law and it was from this he began to get into that ancient medieval history and start reading a lot of Political Science from europe that i would point out one of the scholars argued adams was the only one of the Founding Fathers that have anything but accept the presence. They had a low opinion of him. They read the rest and have a quite higher opinion of him and learned a great deal from it so thats the way that i think he comes into the association in the past. We will dig into this that took place on the table at the outset if we are looking at the political thinker what does the ideal constitution look like broadly speaking . One of the differences between the constitutional thought and the constitution as we know it is he understood the different parts of the government as the different parts of society, so the wine, the few and the many, the society is fundamentally broken down in different parts. The government was supposed to reflect back, Something Like the element of society and like the aristocratic or the social economic and delete elements of society and popular chamber that we call the house of representatives, democratic, the popular part of society and that is quite different from the way that we have come to think of the relationship between the government and society. With the advent of the federalist papers and the argument for the constitution that we find, we find a departure from john adams constitutional thought and people like James Madison and Alexander Hamilton start describing each part of society and government as representatives of the people as a whole. One american people. And even though we have a senate and house of representatives, they all represent people in different ways so we find a kind of eclipse in the modern constitutional flaws in this whole idea based on different classes. And john adams i suggest in the book is interesting in this current moment because in a way, some americans in the last several years especially in the economic inequality increases they are becoming again much more interested in the class and the difference it makes for politics. That is something john adams caret a lot about and he cared quite a bit more i would argue than his contemporaries did. So both of you explore john adams view of the few of the arrest walker sees. Your book is largely about that. How did john adams understand this view and what does he mean by the aristocracy . Guest . Could one thing i find him doing is his faul thoughts develop on aristocracy but i think it is a surprise to him and how much he becomes interested. Up until the declaration of independence, he lived in a society that had a visible aristocracy and he didnt think very consciously about it. If he had been asked about it, he would have said these are people with more money and education and they are doing a good job and various positions of the government, education, whatever. He would have defended that particularly in the town he lived in. The family was the quincy family and he admired them and his family for generations. He had no trouble with that. Then the war of independence comes and he sees many men in massachusetts and all over making a lot of money off the war. We think of the great sacrifice of the soldiers on the line and the sailors and the women and children at home and it brought abroad alot of suffering for a f people. It made a few people very wealthy. They were supplying the Continental Army and financing the privateers and seizing variable cargo. Adams began to look at these people and fought they were not behaving very well. They were greedy, arrogant, trying to bustle their way into politics at the highest level and this is something that every single year for a decade after the declaration, he thought about this more and more and finally sat down to write the defense of the constitution such as the defense of the state constitutions as they existed in 1786. The point of the book was to argue for strong executives and to argue that aristocracies were a threat, they were dangerous, they must be controlled, but they could not be avoided or defeated. They couldnt be denied. They had to be controlled and harvesharnessed. Aristocracy is a discovery for him and i would add as he goes on in this life he begins to see the need to define aristocracy in ways that fit americas culture. No titles, no monopolies, instead personal qualities, family inheritances, various things like this and that is where he ended up on the subject. You mentioned the concerns about economic inequality today and we see this across the ideological spectrum from supporters of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders talking about the 1 and talking about a rigged system or draining the swamp. To what degree did adams diagnosis and a count of the few, how was it similar to what we see today versus what was unique in his own time . One of the surprising moment for me researching this book is by and i was looking through in an unrelated moment, looking through a book in the 1950s by a marxist sociologist who wrote a famous book called the power elite which is probably the most authoritative study of the eli elite. In the chapter at the end he is writing about a certain element and says there is a figure in the history thats pretty much says all this and that is john adams. He goes on to quote john adams especially in another major book john adams wrote. One thing about john adams thinking that is very similar to the current contemporary ways of thinking about economic elite is that he focused on power, he focused on the power elite. This was different than his contemporary. So to give one example, many of the contemporaries thought the American Revolution turned decisively against the aristocratic titles and the constitution has prohibited the titles of nobility. Sso has he to be much solved the problem in the aristocracy adams rejected that idea and thought even though he had done away with the title, the quality as richard is beginning to mention other qualities like family names, like physical beauty and especially well. The second part of this we could discuss a little bit more, the second part of this if he was very skeptical of the notion that many of the contemporaries especially Thomas Jefferson had this yes we have done away with the old aristocracy but we have a new aristocracy but its not a dangerous one. It is merely an aristocracy of power or what jefferson called the natural aristocracy as opposed to the old sow jeffersons that we now have an aristocracy of talent and virtue. Adams agreed with that of threepoint dot one of the themes of his later writing is this idea that actually qualities like wealth and beauty was given to us by fortune are much more powerful than qualities like talent and virtue which are given by emirate and in that sense, is a critical view of the power of wealth and the power of family. This wasnt quite held by the contemporary view even those like jefferson who in other ways were very worried about the financial elite and things like this. We have this account that is sort of in inevitable few and as a matter of constitutional design how did he think we might control and harness the few for good purposes . I would have to say in terms of Structural Solutions to the problem, this may be the weakest part of his whole argument and anyone that reads my book would see i am very deeply in love with john adams. When he came to think about how he would control the air of stalkers become as he had one solution that made sense but was open to criticism over time and that is to have a very powerful executive. He argued that the air of stalkers he is the natural enemy of a powerful executive and a powerful executive is the natural ally of the people. The republic works while when the strong executives Work Together to keep the aristocracy under control. He further said you could do this by putting the aristocracy and a special constitutional body, the upper house of the legislature, the senate and that they would be in a sense ostracized where you could see them and so forth. Lucas mentioned in his book that one source of this idea seems to be the writing of one who praised the british constitution and the ostracism that comes from that. Othat. The reason i say that the weakest part of the argument is first of all the ostracism idea probably doesnt work particularly well. His notion is if you get all the aristocrats in the senate, they wont be in the house of representatives where they will distort and overall intimidate the ordinary representatives of less social standing. But particularly when the society gets large, you can have so many aristocrats that begin to control or contain them all and they will spill over into the house of representatives and they already have a long time ago. So i see that as a weakness. The strength that i see, hes telling people you have to admit that having aristocracy. You cant get rid of it so you have to try to be vigilant against the power of an aristocracy. That lesson plus his assistance on a very broad publicly system of education that the two things together i think is the best possibility of control of an aristocracy. There may be basic limits in the country, there may be certain basic limits into how much you can control and economic aristocracy but adams said you have to try and do what you can. I just want to add to that, i share that skepticism and one fascinating point, he has a late correspondence in the retirement era and correspondence with Thomas Jefferson i highly recommend. Theres one set of readings but at one point, he is writing about aristocracy and its Something Like this ostracism scheme and jefferson responds with Something Like you thinks with the senate you can coordinate the aristocrats but what is more likely is the aristocrats will capture. What he meant is what you are basically doing is handing the government over by ensuring that they have one part of it and then they will likely i think adams never really had a compelling response to what happened in arguably Something Like that has happened. Most of the congress millionaires, the vast majority [inaudible] i agree on this. I think that the lesson isnt so much of the institution the inse been proposed, but is too raised the question of how is it we as a society and a political system built institutions were failed to build institutions that can somehow counterbalance the power of social and economic elite . One institution that has been relevant in this regard is labor unions that served at Something Like the goal of Something Like what john adams imagined the popular assemblies doing. They were a Political Force in society that represented the counter balance of power in the higher order. Political parties used to do a more effective job than they do today at organizing the interest of middleclass and workingclass people. There was a time when journalists described the Democratic Party and the Franklin Roosevelt era described the Democratic Party in the house of representatives that it nominated as the house that worked for the pro libertaria libertarians. It was a body of government that gave a kind of affirmative action to people in politics. But that isnt the case anymore. Both parties are dominated by economic elites. But these are the questions that adams encouraged us to ask. You mentioned his vision of a strong executive and the role in the system. Where did his view of the strong executive come from. When did he begin to adhere to this and did it develop out all over time . Guest he came to the belief first that is before he even started thinking about an aristocracy and in one way it is a little curious that he did because he didnt have much truth for the governors especially Thomas Jefferson whom he really hated as the last civilian governor of massachusetts said that and put in a general gauge to clam down on the failed quickly. But adams thought of the virtuous executive chosen by the people could be effective and an important part of this is he didnt want an executive to be chosen by the legislator and bright as the revolution was beginning to heat up, the various provinces as they moved to the independent statehood decided we will have legislatures and then the legislatures will choose the governor or even an executive council. Adams said this is the plural executives. You want one executive, the independent chosen by the Legislature Said he got the chance to show how it should be done. In 1779 he drafted the constitution. And in that constitution and the governor was elected by the entire population so he had a separate power base from the legislature. Then he had a senate and house of representatives. He thought all of them working together that this would work fairly well. She admitted that it wouldnt be perfect but towards the end of his life he sent a letter but said they have handled as best the problem of aristocracy and the government and then he added we may do better than either. He wasnt sure. He said some days we will do great in others it will be a disaster. He was hopeful that these mechanisms would work. That is the best way i can put it i think. We have the presidency largely detailed in the constitution and we also have the development of the presidency over time with commentators speaking of the rise of the imperial presidency into the 21st century. You heard a little bit of presenting the vision of the executive. What might he make a the development especially into the 21st century . Is he closer to the vision of the executive or are they altogether similar . This is something i am very skeptical about as a partisan. Because i think if you want to be very generous towards his notion of an executive that would rein in the aristocrats, you could cherry pick American History and point to Theodore Roosevelt and talking about the malefactors of the wealth. You could talk about Franklin Roosevelt and describing the economic loyalist and i welcome their hatred and taking on this antagonistic relationship of those times. But i would imagine that it would be just as easy to come up with examples of collusion. Perhaps richard mentioned the influence of machiavelli. One clear element of the book is that machiavel