Old man eloquent

John Quincy Adams was the most existentialist of US presidents, and one of the worst.  He viewed his life as the consequence of a choice -- to politick in the public interest.  For more than a half century, he chronicled his choice in a journal that exceeded 10,000 pages.  “Any day in which he did not create an entry in his diary seemed like a day lost to the passage of time,” writes his best biographer, Fred Kaplan.  “Like ‘that irresistible current which hurries and dashes over the cataract of Niagara…so am I hurried down the stream of time, and day after day turns over the precipice and is lost.’”

If anything, Adams took the consequences of choice a bit seriously.  “I believe,” he wrote, “that moral principle should be the alpha and omega of all literary composition, poetry or prose, scientific or literary, written or spoken, and emphatically of every discourse….Pen should never be put to paper but for the discharge of some duty to God or man.”  Mickey Spillane might have demurred.      

Like any existentialist, Adams sought to expand his own freedom by decoupling the shackles on others.  In 1844, after a decade of struggle, including two attempts to censure him in the House of Representatives, Adams destroyed the gag rule that enabled Southern congressmen to avoid all debate over slavery and indeed to avoid the sight of an abolitionist petition.  And before the Supreme Court in 1841, he successfully defended the Africans aboard the Amistad who had been kidnapped for slavery and who killed one of their captors. 

Adams was principled and therefore a poor president.  He refused to compromise, so he rarely collaborated with Congress on legislation.  He was a lame duck well before his first (and last) term ended in 1829.  In contrast, his nemesis James Polk accomplished all four goals that he had set for himself in his single presidential term 15 years later, including the acquisition of Texas, which Adams had feared would enable the slave states to dominate the federal government.

Polk gave us Texas; Adams, the Smithsonian.  When an Englishman, James Smithson, bestowed half a million dollars on the US for the pursuit of knowledge, Democratic Congressmen proposed to invest the money in Arkansas bonds in order to win the state’s favor in the 1840 presidential elections.  Adams saw to it that impartial trustees would instead manage the money for a public museum.  Existentialist politicians are not myopic, not even the Whigs.  -- Plautus            

References

Walter R. Borneman.  Polk: The man who transformed the presidency and America.  Random House.  2008.

Fred Kaplan.  John Quincy Adams:  American visionary.  Harper.  2014.

John F. Kennedy.  Profiles in courage.  Harper.  1956.  Perhaps the worst history ever to win the Pulitzer.

Robert V. Remini.  John Quincy Adams.  Times Books. 2002.  Concise.

Harlow Giles Unger.  John Quincy Adams.  De Capo Press.  2012.  A lively narrative.

Granny's banquet

The late Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion wine is a delightful reminiscence of his childhood in rural Illinois in the summer of 1928, thinly disguised as a novel.  My favorite episode involved Grandmother’s chaotic but irresistible cooking.  “Nobody knows what Grandma cooks until we sit at table,” says Grandpa.  Aunt Rose, who is visiting, decides to organize Grandma’s kitchen and to give her a cookbook.  Her cooking promptly goes flat, and the boarders retire early from dinner to go back to their separate rooms and brood. 

So Grandpa takes matters into hand.  “Strolling back under the warm summer elms to the house, Aunt Rose suddenly gasped and put her hand to her throat. 

“There, on the bottom of the porch step, was her luggage, neatly packed.  On top of one suitcase, fluttering in the summer breeze, was a pink railroad ticket. 

“The boarders, all ten of them, were seated on the porch stiffly.  Grandfather, like a train conductor, a mayor, a good friend, came down the steps solemnly.

“ ‘Rose,’ he said to her, taking her hand and shaking it up and down, ‘I have something to say to you.’

“ ‘What is it?’ said Aunt Rose.

“ ‘Aunt Rose,’ he said.  ‘Goodbye.’”

The cooking improves.  --Plautus