"It was my understanding that Jefferson left the party a long time ago..."

That's a paraphrase of what former vice-president Dick Cheney (and the first VP to shoot a guy since Aaron Burr, TJ's veep) said about former Secretary of State Colin Powell, discussing how Cheney didn't think Powell was really a Republican anymore. But the same could easily be said about Thomas Jefferson, the first Republican president. Compare this list of facts to what you know about today's Republican party; Thomas Jefferson

--loved the French. Drank French wines.

--spent government money on art (Houdon's sculpture of Washington in the Virginia capitol building).

--was, among his many accomplishments, proudest of (it's one of the few things listed on his self-designed tombstone) his authorship of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. In fact, he

--founded the University of Virginia so that schools could teach free of religious influence.

--was a big fan of science, and used government money to fund the Lewis and Clark expedition.

--used powers not necessarily reserved for the Executive branch in order to make the Louisiana Purchase, circumventing the Constitution to do so (although he did draft an amendment that would have made it OK, time was ticking).

Now, this list is a touch biased. Parties evolve (I'm grateful that the Democrats are a far cry from Andrew Jackson, too). But it's interesting to see how political parties--which come into existence for the Adams-Jefferson battle of 1796--have evolved away from their origins. Jefferson might have been the first president to campaign on a platform that changed when faced with the realities of the office, but he wasn't the last.

Uncirculated Proofs

Apparently, this is very difficult.

The people who design coins (who, if they're not called "numismatographers," should be) have hailed this Jefferson nickel as a masterpiece of the numismatographer's art. The reason most people on coins are in profile is that's because it's the easiest way to show someone--there's not nearly as much three-dimensionality as a head-on or three-quarters view.

That's got to be a metaphor for the biographer's art, right? It's easiest to present a flat version of your subject, tougher to make her/him more three-dimensional, to accept the difficulties in reconciling a lived life with ink on the page. It's easier to think of Jefferson as the architect not only of Monticello, but also of America, writing the Declaration of Independence. It's nice to think of him as the guy who started the University of Virginia as a public institution, a reaction to the church-influenced education he experienced at William and Mary. It's pleasant to imagine Jefferson waving goodbye to Lewis and Clark from the steps of his house, telling them to keep an eye out for mastodons while exploring the Louisiana Purchase.

That's the Jefferson I grew up with--he was my favorite president as a kid (a writer!), and one of my earliest memories is reading the text of the Declaration on the walls of the Jefferson Memorial in DC. But we've learned more about Jefferson (well, "learned" probably isn't right--a lot of these things were discussed when he was vice-president and later president) as the years have gone on, making the man more complex, more rounded. The sheen is of that nickel now, but it still spends, and while there are numismatists who value highest the uncirculated proof, the pristine, shiny coin, I'm more interested in the story it tells in its movements.

Wrapping up Adams

One of the things I'd like to do with this project is involve my local library as much as possible (this may get difficult later one, but I'll try as best I can). So even though I've got access to a university library and interlibrary loan, I'm still walking downtown and checking out books for two weeks. So, despite my Netflix account, when I checked out McCullough's book, I also put in a request at the local public library for the HBO miniseries based on it.

I was #91 in the line. It's a month and a half later, and I'm #66. At this rate, we might get to watch it during November (John Quincy Adams month).

I think that's a pretty good way of thinking about Adams; I've felt stuck with him. I'm partway through the Jefferson biography, and I keep comparing it to McCullough's book ("how can you just skip over his years in France with the Adamses like that?" I'll say). The man really seems to have dominated my conception of the early days of America in a way I wouldn't have expected. Washington, sure; Jefferson, of course. Those guys were important. But I'm reacting to Adams in the way I do with new information, turning it over and over in my head to try to find where it fits in the brain.

New Book!

After our mammoth experience with John Adams, we're taking August easy (well, easier) with R. B. Bernstein's Thomas Jefferson, which, to judge a book by its jacket, seems to be exhaustive without being exhausting.

(Also: does titling biographies seem like the easiest job ever? I've reached the point already where something like Ellis's His Excellency, George Washington reads like a Dave Eggers or Sherman Alexie title.)

A little beach reading

Even at the beach (Atlantic Beach, North Carolina, to be exact), I was reading David McCullough's John Adams. I alternated between that and Life and Style magazine, just to keep in the spirit of summer.

The election of 1800 is notable for being the first presidential campaign in which there was, well, a campaign (also for being the first time a sitting vice-president ran against a sitting president). Although neither candidate would actually campaign--that sort of thing was thought to be beneath them--the tabloids of the day certainly did enough tarring and smearing to make Bill O'Reilly proud.

Adams was a secret monarchist who wanted to be America's first king, they argued (much in the way Obama is a secret Kenyan-born socialist), and therefore couldn't be trusted with a second term. Jefferson, while not actively making these points, certainly didn't do anything to stop them, and in fact supported the anti-Adams, pro-Jefferson tabloids.

I suppose it's a nice sense of American continuity that we've always had a partisan press; that there's not much of a line connecting Philip Freneau and Glenn Beck (although Freneau could actually write well, including poetry; I shudder to think of Beck's verse). But at the same time, it's a little disappointing; one of those perils that comes with having a free press.

Presidential Rehab

Do you recognize this man?



Why, it's Pope Linus, of course, the second pontiff, who ruled what must have been a pretty small group of Christians for about nine years (67-76). You'd be forgiven for not recognizing him; I mean, I went to Catholic school and took Mr. Mulvaney's Church History course, and I couldn't pick St. Linus out of a lineup.

John Adams, the Linus of America, suffered the same fate for a long time. I remember visiting the Denver Mint as a kid and buying souvenir coins in the gift shop. They sold coins with each president's portrait, and I decided to buy three. I bought Washington, because he was number one, and Jefferson, because he was my favorite president. Then, because he filled the gap in between, I bought Adams, the guy between numbers one and three.

So it went with Adams in popular culture. George Washington was the first president; Adams was the first vice-president (and the first to complain about how powerless the VP is). GW got elected twice, unanimously; JA is the first guy to lose a presidential election. Thomas Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase; JA signs the Alien and Sedition Acts into law. For a long time, he's a name on a list, a brief stop on the way between the important founding fathers.

This changes in 2001, when David McCullough publishes John Adams, his 751-page bio of America's first forgotten president. What's interesting about this isn't the fact that it's a success--as a New York Times points out, the book is "rebelling against the rebellion against the history of Great White Men"--but rather that it's taken so long for someone to do a really comprehensive reworking of Adams's reputation. Maybe the problem is too much information--after all, part of the mystery of Washington is Martha's destruction of their correspondence (Jefferson does the same when his wife dies, too), whereas John and Abagail Adams write each other (and everyone else) constantly. McCullough's got a lot of reading ahead of him (as he notes, the microfilm runs over five miles in length).

The result, though, of all this primary material and McCullough's willingness to wade through it all, is lively, engaging reading; I felt like I knew Washington a little bit better as a person at the end of June, but finishing John Adams felt like saying goodbye to a good friend. Ellis fleshed out Washington, but McCullough animates the Adamses--a remarkable family who we'll obviously return to later this year--with a vivacity that makes for a wonderful read.

But there's a dark side to this presidential rehab. We know that George W. Bush likes McCullough a lot--he gives him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2006--and that Bush frequently invoked Harry S. Truman (another McCullough subject) in discussing how history would vindicate his presidency. Is is possible that, in reading about Adams, Bush thought some future biographer would explain away his failings and restore him to his believed rightful place in American history?