Sunday, December 17, 2017

"Mr. President"



"Mr. President"

Kathleen Spaltro

(c) Copyright (2017).  All Rights Reserved.

"Always an honest Man, often a wise one, but sometimes, and in some things, absolutely out of his senses." Thus Benjamin Franklin in 1783 characterized John Adams. Reading such a frank assessment by a contemporary restores our sense of the flesh-and-blood fallibility of great Americans. Over-idealization dulls our interest, but the idiosyncrasies of personality and character that create inner and interpersonal conflict intrigue us.

I first became aware of Adams's conflict with Franklin when I watched the superb HBO mini-series "John Adams." I consider this series the best historical dramatization American TV has ever produced; I had absolutely no interest in Adams before watching  the series, but it altered my attitude completely.

Paul Giamatti as John Adams and Laura Linney as Abigail Adams star in a warts-and-all rendition of the American Revolution, its aftermath after the colonists' unlikely victory over the British with the help of the French, and Adams's career as reluctant revolutionary, ambassador, vice president to George Washington, president, and happy retiree to his farm outside Boston. He comes across as brilliant, incorruptible, vain, touchy, emotional, impulsive, usually dissatisfied and unhappy, but absolutely deeply in love with his mate—in a phrase, a lovable, if difficult, man of integrity.

The relationship between John and Abigail is fascinating. It touches me that their letters addressed each other as "My dearest friend." Their eldest son, John Quincy Adams, later president, also expressed an immense regard for his mother. Abigail Adams must have been extraordinary to have kept the devotion and respect of two such brilliant men of great integrity. To me, she seems like a Roman matron of the Roman Republic.

Despite his marital happiness, Adams felt recurrent unhappiness in his appointed and elective roles. By nature a passionate advocate,  he was simply not Machiavellian enough to relish politics or intrigue. In this, he was bested by his fellow revolutionary, betrayer, enemy, and friend reclaimed in old age, Thomas Jefferson. Ironically, Adams's perceptions of the untrustworthiness of human character ring truer than Jefferson's aspirational and idealistic views. Envisioning the American republic as "a government of laws and not of men," Adams sought to restrain the misuse of power.

He also disagreed with his friend's vision of the role of the United States in the world. As Gordon S. Wood explained, "Jefferson believed that the United States was a chosen nation with a special responsibility to spread democracy around the world. More than any other figure in our history Jefferson is responsible for the idea of American exceptionalism. Adams could not have disagreed more. Deeply versed in history, he said over and over that America had no special providence, no special role in history, that Americans were no different from other peoples, that the United States was just as susceptible to viciousness and corruption as any other nation. In this regard, at least, Jefferson’s vision has clearly won the day." But we would have had a happier past and present if we had heeded Adams.

Machiavellian

More Machiavellian presidents than Adams include some of our greatest: Franklin Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. I count them as three of our six greatest presidents: Lincoln, Washington, FDR, TR, Eisenhower, and Truman. That does not mean that I idealize them or think them faultless but only that I recognize their mastery of the requirements of presidential leadership.

In the fourth episode of Ken Burns's splendid documentary "The Roosevelts: An Intimate History," Teddy Roosevelt is dead at 60, burned out after having lived his 9 lives; FDR is battling polio, as well as resuming his political career as Governor of New York State and presidential candidate; and Eleanor (TR's niece as well as FDR's wife) is creating a separate life as her own person--a life that she fears losing as First Lady after FDR's landslide victory in 1932.

Both male Roosevelts determinedly fought for goals that they conceived to be good and that often were good. The series, however, reveals their shadow side as well—the tremendous egotism and ruthlessness that perhaps always accompany great leadership. TR seems extremely charismatic, very impressive, and yet incredibly insensitive—a man who was a stranger to introspection. Even though FDR idolized his cousin Ted as "the greatest man I ever knew," FDR was quite different. Perhaps no more introspective than TR, FDR seems nevertheless a more inward person--charming, devious, and cunning, determined to have his will and never crushed more than temporarily by defeat.

Enigmatic

John Adams, Theodore Roosevelt, and Franklin Roosevelt could not have differed more in personality. But none of them approaches the level of mystery of Lincoln's enigmatic personality and character. So many portrayals of Lincoln in fiction, history, and biography have attempted to unriddle him for us.

Simultaneously ingenious, irritating, and impressive, George Saunders's recent experimental novel "Lincoln in the Bardo" glimpses Lincoln's human vulnerability and uncertainty as he grieves for his dead boy, Willie, and worries about conducting the Civil War:  "There was so much to do, he was not doing it well and, if done poorly, all would go to ruin. Perhaps in time (he told himself) it would get better, and might even be good again. He did not really believe it."

"Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House" by Elizabeth Keckley, Mary Todd Lincoln's seamstress, "her only companion, except her children, in the days of her great sorrow," tantalizes with Keckley's intimate glimpses of Lincoln as a father and husband. Commenting "We are indifferent to those we do not love, and certainly the President was not indifferent to his wife. She often wounded him in unguarded moments, but calm reflection never failed to bring regret," Keckley contrasted the characters of Mary and Abraham in a simple anecdote.

"Mr. Lincoln was fond of pets. He had two goats that knew the sound of his voice, and when he called them they would come bounding to his side. In the warm bright days, he and [his youngest son] Tad would sometimes play in the yard with these goats, for an hour at a time."

 " 'Well, come here and look at my two goats,' Lincoln invited her. 'I believe they are the kindest and best goats in the world. See how they sniff the clear air, and skip and play in the sunshine. Whew! what a jump,' he exclaimed as one of the goats made a lofty spring. 'Madam Elizabeth, did you ever before see such an active goat?' Musing a moment, he continued: 'He feeds on my bounty, and jumps with joy. Do you think we could call him a bounty-jumper? But I flatter the bounty-jumper. My goat is far above him. I would rather wear his horns and hairy coat through life, than demean myself to the level of the man who plunders the national treasury in the name of patriotism. The man who enlists into the service for a consideration, and deserts the moment he receives his money but to repeat the play, is bad enough; but the men who manipulate the grand machine and who simply make the bounty-jumper their agent in an outrageous fraud are far worse'."

"Mrs. Lincoln was not fond of pets, and she could not understand how Mr. Lincoln could take so much delight in his goats. After Willie’s death, she could not bear the sight of anything he loved, not even a flower. Costly bouquets were presented to her, but she turned from them with a shudder, and either placed them in a room where she could not see them, or threw them out of the window. She gave all of Willie’s toys—everything connected with him—away, as she said she could not look upon them without thinking of her poor dead boy, and to think of him, in his white shroud and cold grave, was maddening."

"I never in my life saw a more peculiarly constituted woman. Search the world over, and you will not find her counterpart. After Mr. Lincoln’s death, the goats that he loved so well were given away—I believe to Mrs. Lee, née Miss Blair, one of the few ladies with whom Mrs. Lincoln was on intimate terms in Washington."

This complex, strange, and gifted man who overindulged his beloved sons and enjoyed playing with their pet goats also challenged Congress most somberly in 1862, "Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.…We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth."

First appeared in The Woodstock Independent