More on John Adams: oligarchy and wealth-envy in a republic

New Republic staff writer Timothy Noah has some further reflections on the second President. John Adams argued that oligarchy, the rule of the wealthy, might overpower the system the Founders had wrought. It's interesting to consider this in the light of Lindsay Chervinsky's exploration of Adams' presidency.

Democracy Is No Bulwark Against Oligarchy

The hard lesson of 2024 is that liberals spent too much time fretting that Donald Trump would subvert democracy if he lost and not enough that Trump would win a free and fair election. We can argue about the reason why voters elected Trump—inflation, transgender hysteria, Joe Biden staying too long in the race—but we can’t pretend that those who cast their vote for Trump didn’t know they were choosing oligarchy...

... 2024 may be the first election in American history in which a majority of United States voters specifically chose oligarchy. This is terra incognita, but it turns out to be a problem to which our second president, John Adams, gave considerable thought.

None of the Founders fretted as much about oligarchy as Adams; he was writing about its dangers as early as 1766, and in 1785 he urged that the Pennsylvania Constitution permit sufficient payment to its legislators to allow ordinary people to serve, lest “an Aristocracy or oligarchy of the rich will be formed.” Six years after he ended his presidency (the weakest part of his legacy), Adams wrote that “the Creed of my whole Life” had been that “No simple Form of Government, can possibly secure Men against the Violences of Power. Simple Monarchy will soon mould itself into Despotism, Aristocracy will soon commence an Oligarchy, and Democracy, will soon degenerate into an Anarchy.”

... [Sociologist] C. Wright Mills identified Adams as a more incisive critic of the power elite than Thorstein Veblen, and Judith Shklar and John Patrick Diggins voiced similar opinions. In the 2016 book John Adams and the Fear of American Oligarchy, Luke Mayville, a Yale-trained historian and co-founder of the grassroots group Reclaim Idaho, takes this argument further. “In his letters, essays, and treatises,” Mayville writes, “Adams explored in subtle detail what might be called soft oligarchy—the disproportionate power that accrues to wealth on account of widespread sympathy for the rich.” Adams did not judge this attraction benign, but neither did he believe it could be wished away.

The Framers of the Constitution, Mayville argues, believed in checks and balances among various government institutions, but they did not consider any need to balance the power of government against the power of wealthy private citizens. Adams thought otherwise. “The rich, the well-born, and the able,” Adams wrote in A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America (1787–8), “acquire an influence among the people that will soon be too much for simple honesty and plain sense, in a house of representatives.” ...

Adams may have been naïve about the possibility that a rich sociopath like Trump might eventually come to power, but in Mayville’s view, [Adams's intellectual nemesis Thomas] Jefferson was just as naïve to believe that oligarchy would wither and die if government would only deny it power.

Mayville summarizes Jefferson’s view as “Old World aristocracies would be replaced in the republican age by new natural aristocracies of virtue and talent.” To a great extent that eventually happened, aided in the twentieth century first by the spread of publicly funded high schools where attendance was mandatory and, at midcentury, by the spread of higher education.

Why do rich people exert so much influence? Money is the obvious answer, and Adams acknowledged its power. But in The Discourses on Davila (1790) he emphasized another, more psychological explanation. There is, Adams wrote, a universal desire “to be seen, heard, talked of, approved and respected, by the people about [us], and within [our] knowledge.” In short: We all live to show off.

This is why Mills compared Adams to Veblen; one might also compare Adams to the journalist Tom Wolfe, the preeminent chronicler of social status in the late twentieth century. Granted, among idealistic college students, associating oneself with the wretched of the earth yields greater status, but for most of the rest of us associating oneself with the rich is what gets the job done.

... During his first presidential term, Trump showed that he could transgress beyond our wildest dreams—flout the woke hall monitors, lie with abandon, defy the law—and get away with it all because he was rich. Even the many Trump voters who pulled the lever for him in 2024 while disapproving of his personal behavior tend to envy the man.

Trump Envy isn’t the only political force out there; that explains why he lost in 2020. But it’s turned out to be shockingly powerful. The United States grew more oligarchical over the past half-century, with the rich accumulating ever-greater power over politics. But Trump represents a quantum leap—supercharged oligarchy not in spite of the public will but because of it. Which makes ours a John Adams sort of moment. 

This was as bleak an electoral outcome as the country has ever seen, and democracy wasn’t the victim. It was the cause.

Superficially, it is easy to think that Jefferson, a plantation- and enslaved persons-owning grandee even if perpetually over his head in debt, would be the advocate for oligarchy. To our eyes, he was an oligarch. But it was the New England lawyer, considered a boring institution builder, who saw more vividly the danger to the republic from wealthy men.

It is still likely in our power to choose, belatedly, against fully substituting the rule of the rich for stumbling, progressive democracy. Do we want to?

Molding the presidency

The phrase “the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there” (apparently originated in a 1953 novel by L.P. Hartley) came to me frequently while reading Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents That Forged the Republic by Lindsay M. Chervinsky.

The presidency of John Adams and the man himself are hard to fit into 21st century frames. In 1797 when Adams began his term, the parameters of executive function in the government were unformed, carried on among a very small class of men most of whom had known and competed with each other for decades, whose communications with each other took months, not minutes. These men took seriously concepts of "honor" and "virtue" that mean little to us, but were also greedy and hypocritical in ways that are very recognizable today.

Chervinsky's theme in this book is that Adams's presidency, the second under the Constitutional edifice he'd had such a large role in authoring, set the pattern for subsequent presidents. And that, although both contemporaries and successors found Adams difficult, he did a pretty good job of defining the institution.

... George Washington served successfully for eight years and painstakingly filled out the contours of the office, which gaps and vagaries in the Constitution had left for him to resolve. But no one possessed his stature or enjoyed the same level of public trust -- and no one else ever would again.

Adams was tasked with navigating the presidency without that unique prestige. He was guaranteed to fall short in comparison to Washington. ... The office required a president willing to sacrifice his reputation and popularity on behalf of the nation.

Whoever came next was going to mold the office for all the chief executives to follow. John Adams was an experienced diplomat and a thoughtful constitutional thinker. He was also irascible, stubborn, quixotic, and certain that he knew best most of the time. He proved the right man for the moment.

There was much that the leaders of the still new government didn't know how to navigate. Could a President choose his own cabinet officers? Could he fire them? What level of autonomy should they exercise in their respective spheres? All that was in question.

These leaders of the early republic had no habit or custom of conducting politics as anything less than a scorched earth contest over the direction of the country. After all, most of these men had incited and fought in a revolt against a domineering empire across the ocean and feared both French and British meddling in their new country. They published scurrilous lies about each in in partisan newspapers. Adams's party, the Federalists, tried to use the law to outlaw what they considered seditious political speech. This merely riled their Republican opponents. Adams tried to be somewhat above the fray as president; Chervinsky describes him as primarily focused on managing relations with the country's dangerous foreign entanglements. After all, the early federal government had little power except in foreign relations.

Adams's years abroad as a diplomat during the American revolution convinced him that the European empires would continue to wage war against each other and seize what they wanted whenever possible. He understood that they cared little for the goals and priorities of the United States and instead saw the new nation as a pawn to be leveraged in their centuries-old squabbles. He also developed a deep commitment to neutrality, eager to avoid battles that would harm American trade, threaten the safety of the nation, and sacrifice lives and treasure.

She describes his accomplishments:

He ensured the presidency's durability by staunchly defending executive authority. ... Defying the loudest voices in his party, Adams reasserted control over the military, foreign policy, and executive branch personnel, leaving a strengthened office for his successors.

[Most of all,] Adams secured peace and the United States' place on the world stage.

In the election of 1800, Adams ran for a second term with Federalist backing while Thomas Jefferson led the Republican party in opposition. This was one of the messiest elections in our history. Then as now, the winner of the Presidency was to be named by the Electoral College. But then, as opposed to today, the naming of electors was up to whatever method was used by each state; moreover, electors understood themselves unbound by any requirement to vote for a candidate based on how and by whom they had been chosen; they were completely free actors in the process. Nor was it clear whether they were restricted to the two men understood to be atop two partisan tickets, Adams and Jefferson. Perhaps they could substitute some other worthy? The process dragged on amidst unseemly bargaining and horse trading until, finally, the electors agreed barely on Jefferson.

Chervinsky applauds how Adams handled the drawn out controversy that decided his fate as the loser:

For all the shadows of the election of 1800, there were crucial precedents that shaped the way future generations participated in the democratic process. Despite the threats, none of the worst violence came to pass. No blood was shed, the transition was peaceful. ...

The transition was a close call, however, and participants were appropriately sobered by their near miss with violence and constitutional crisis. ... With dash of luck and a generous helping of civic virtue, the final outcome of the election both adhered to the strict text of the Constitution and reflected the will of the people.

... While we might assume today that eighteenth century Americans revered the Constitution and respected the sanctity of their elections as a central feature of the republic, they did not. Instead, this defining characteristic of American democracy emerged because the first two administrations established precedents that crystallized into norms and customs. These political practices were not guaranteed. ... The Constitution's quasi-sacred status emerged slowly over centuries.

On balance Chervinsky concludes Adams was a good president and a good man.

"I am persuaded," [Benjamin] Franklin wrote to Robert Livingston [in 1783, from France] that Adams "means well for his Country, is always an honest Man, often a Wise One, but sometimes and in some things, absolutely out of his Senses."

Had Adams known of this letter, he probably would have been amused. He had a wicked sense of humor, especially about himself, and he knew when he was being ridiculous. ...

For all his doubts about humanity and himself, Adams remained unfailingly patriotic and committed to the future of the United States. He believed the nation could grow into something extraordinary and was willing to use every tool at his disposal to protect that future.

In these convictions, Adams was buoyed by a sense of providence and an unwavering hope that future generations would appreciate his dedication to the country.

Adams also received immeasurable support and courage from a marriage that ranks among history's greatest love stories. Abigail Adams could have easily been lost to history books or briefly noted in their husband's biographical descriptions. Instead she became a highly influential political thinker of the Founding era. ...

This history contains a useful reminder that the reputations of presidents can shift and reshape during their tenure and for years after they leave office. Chervinsky is making the case that a president whose successes were holding a fractious new country together should be counted as one who served his nation well, despite his legions of detractors.

Friday cat blogging

After a lapse, I again have proper supervision. Jack has arrived, with friend, for a visit and remedies the feline void in the household.

Trump hastens imperial decline

We're having gale force winds and intermittent outages this morning, so I am not going to try to write anything that requires coherent attention. Here I share a piece to ponder for the new year.

Author Alfred W. McCoy is the J.R.W. Smail Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who specializes in Southeast Asia. Juan Cole passed this along by way of TomDispatch.

The End of the American Century

... let’s face it, Donald Trump’s second term is likely to mark the end of America’s near-century as the world’s preeminent superpower. After 80 years of near-global hegemony, there are arguably five crucial elements necessary for the preservation of U.S. world leadership: robust military alliances in Asia and Europe, healthy capital markets, the dollar’s role as the globe’s reserve currency, a competitive energy infrastructure, and an agile national security apparatus.

 However, surrounded by sycophants and suffering the cognitive decline that accompanies aging, Trump seems determined to exercise his untrammeled will above all else. That, in turn, essentially guarantees the infliction of damage in each of those areas, even if in different ways and to varying degrees.

America’s unipolar power at the end of the Cold War era has, of course, already given way to a multipolar world. Previous administrations carefully tended the NATO alliance in Europe, as well as six overlapping bilateral and multilateral defense pacts in the sprawling Indo-Pacific region. With his vocal hostility toward NATO, particularly its crucial mutual-defense clause, Trump is likely to leave that alliance significantly damaged, if not eviscerated.

In Asia, he prefers to cozy up to autocrats like China’s Xi or North Korea’s Kim Jong-un instead of cultivating democratic allies like Australia or South Korea. Add to that his conviction that such allies are freeloaders who need to pay up and America’s crucial Indo-Pacific alliances are unlikely to prosper, possibly prompting South Korea and Japan to leave the U.S. nuclear umbrella and become thoroughly independent powers.

Convinced above all else of his own “genius,” Trump seems destined to damage the key economic components of U.S. global power. With his inclination to play favorites with tariff exemptions and corporate regulation, his second term could give the term “crony capitalism” new meaning, while degrading capital markets. His planned tax cuts will add significantly to the federal deficit and national debt, while degrading the dollar’s global clout, which has already dropped significantly in the past four years.

In defiance of reality, he remains wedded to those legacy energy sources, coal, oil, and natural gas. In recent years, however, the cost of electricity from solar and wind power has dropped to half that of fossil fuels and is still falling. For the past 500 years, global power has been synonymous with energy efficiency. As Trump tries to stall America’s transition to green energy, he’ll cripple the country’s competitiveness in countless ways, while doing ever more damage to the planet.

Nor do his choices for key national security posts bode well for U.S. global power. If confirmed as defense secretary, Peter Hegseth, a Fox News commentator with a track record of maladministration, lacks the experience to begin to manage the massive Pentagon budget. Similarly, Trump’s choice for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has no experience in that highly technical field and seems prone to the sort of conspiracy theories that will cloud her judgment when it comes to accurate intelligence assessments.

Finally, the nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, is already promising to punish the president’s domestic critics rather than pursue foreign agents through counterintelligence, the bureau’s critical responsibility.

By the time Trump retires (undoubtedly to accolades from his devoted followers), he will have compressed two decades of slow imperial decline into a single presidential term, effectively ending Washington’s world leadership significantly before its time.

If US imperial decline would be good for most Americans or most other peoples, one could applaud. But that's hard for me to believe, even though I've spent a life fighting American imperial impositions on the rest of the world. The imperial ambitions of the Russia, China, North Korea and Iran axis don't look benign. Hard times ahead and Mr. Trump is a fire accelerator.

There's only one US institution that's gained popular approval

Let's start 2025 on a happy note. Since 2009, unions have gained trust while all the other social pillars have sunk.

Click to enlarge; via Podhorzer.

Let's all work to ensure unions can enable workers to fight for their rights and the rights of all during the Trump regime. This won't be easy. Trump and the tech bros hate worker empowerment. The federal courts are stacked against the less wealthy. But unionized workers are accustomed to obstacles. 

When they fight, we all win.