John Adams: Good for McCain -- and Kerry, Dukakis

Like a lot of pundits, I've been watching John Adams. Like most everything on HBO from The Sopranos to The Wire to Taxicab Confessions -- admit it, you watch -- it's great. And watching it you can't resist drawing parallels to today. Herewith, two observations:

1. John Adams is Good for John McCain. So far, the series glorifies the martial, the musket over the petition. Those who wanted to negotiate rights out of the British are portrayed as wussy quislings with Paul Giamatti's John Adams ripping into the Quakerism of one of his opponents, John Dickinson. My former Time colleague, James Poniewozik, saw parallels to Hillary but I see them more to McCain -- pugnacious, martial, difficult, with a temper. I know Iraq is not Colonial America and Lexington and Concord is not Fallujah and Sadr City. But a film that glorifies martial values and puts them squarely at the center of the country's founding is going to be good for the martial candidate.

2. Massachusetts Men. After years of seeing the Republicans portray Massachusetts as some socialist boutique out of the American mainstream there's something satisfying seeing the Commonwealth as the revolution's foundry, where the country got it's steel. Anyone who lived through the 1988 campaign can't forget George Herbert Walker Bush of Andover and Yale saying that Michael Dukakis, the son of Greek immigrants, was born in "Harvard Yard's boutique." In the series, the southerners are portrayed as wussy appeasers and the South Carolina representative, Edward Rutledge, is especially played as a priss which is somehow gratifying after campaigns in which the South is portrayed as the home of martial and American values. It was after all the Massachusetts Men who forged the revolution's first insurrections and brought the rest of the colonies along with her. Somewhere, I would hope, Michael Dukakis and John Kerry are smiling.

By the latter episodes when President John Adams is repealing civil liberties and taking on a Nixonian mien the series may not reflect so well on George W. Bush's candidate for president in 2008. But for now, I would think the McCain folks would be glad this is on the air.

Comments

[MajorKong]

I enjoyed watching the plucky occupied country fight off the oppressive invading superpower led by a despotic unitary executive.

[Abroad]

Oh please! There is a life outside of politics.

[cktirumalai]

Masssachusetts, Pennsylvania ( represented by Benjamin Franklin, a transplanted Bostonian, more than John Dickinson, to whose views the television drama may be less than fair), and Virginia played a leading part in the fighting and thinking behind the Revolution. Massachusetts gave the nation two Presidents (John Adams and his son), Virginia a whole series of them beginning with Washington, Pennsylvania none until the unfortunate Buchanan, the only one so far. The only New Englander to be President in recent decades was John Kennedy, unless one counts Bush Senior. After the early years of the Revolution, Massachusetts flowered in literature and thought, Ralph Waldo Emerson being its quintessential representative. Emerson was not a political partisan; his aim was to help the nation formulate and clarify its objectives: a fertile intellectual and cultural laboratory. A good deal of Abolitionist thought arose in New England but its effectual political arm was Lincoln.

[DickTater]

Boy, that is a stretch. I think what Adams is portraying in the early episodes is bravery. I didn't take away "war" as the end or means in which he delighted. And truly, muskets did not really win us our freedom. Cunning, conniving, allies, blockades.....did more than all the lead and powder combined.

What was on display between the Revolutionaries and the Appeasers was to fight for your own rights or continue to submit to financial indignities without end. When George!!! sent his admonitions to the rebellious, promising to hang the unrepentent and treat lightly the rest, you saw how the appeasers longed to just dutifully return to indenture-hood, it was so much easier and less mess.

You know Mr. Cooper, unlike the media narrative of our days, courage is found as much or more on the left. The Right is conformity. The Right is to Talk Big but not show up. The Right is all about sending someone else's kids. The Right is the party of Big Daddy, a big daddy who will beat up anybody who scares you. And everybody scares you.

I am not saying their is no honor or bravery on the right. Military families especially. But the majority of power groups on the Right are cowards. They have money and nothing else. And they don't bother with actually going to a war.