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.