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.