The Problem of Democracy

Description

“Told with authority and style. . . Crisply summarizing the Adamses’ legacy, the authors stress principle over partisanship.”–The Wall Street Journal

How the father and son presidents foresaw the rise of the cult of personality and fought those who sought to abuse the weaknesses inherent in our democracy.

Until now, no one has properly dissected the intertwined lives of the second and sixth (father and son) presidents. John and John Quincy Adams were brilliant, prickly politicians and arguably the most independently minded among leaders of the founding generation. Distrustful of blind allegiance to a political party, they brought a healthy skepticism of a brand-new system of government to the country’s first 50 years. They were unpopular for their fears of the potential for demagoguery lurking in democracy, and–in a twist that predicted the turn of twenty-first century politics–they warned against, but were unable to stop, the seductive appeal of political celebrities Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson.

In a bold recasting of the Adamses’ historical roles, The Problem of Democracy is a major critique of the ways in which their prophetic warnings have been systematically ignored over the centuries. It’s also an intimate family drama that brings out the torment and personal hurt caused by the gritty conduct of early American politics. Burstein and Isenberg make sense of the presidents’ somewhat iconoclastic, highly creative engagement with America’s political and social realities. By taking the temperature of American democracy, from its heated origins through multiple upheavals, the authors reveal the dangers and weaknesses that have been present since the beginning. They provide a clear-eyed look at a decoy democracy that masks the reality of elite rule while remaining open, since the days of George Washington, to a very undemocratic result in the formation of a cult surrounding the person of an elected leader.“Although the current occupant of the White House is nowhere mentioned by name in this book, his prodigious shadow looms large. The trends that so distressed the Adamses in the nation’s early years have intensified to a degree they could scarcely have imagined, thanks to virulent social media, the injection of vast sums of money into American campaigns, a politicized judiciary and rising economic inequality. We can only be grateful that father and son were spared this vision of their worst fears coming true.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Ambitious and beautifully written…This book offers an abundance of riches. It is both biography and family history of two brilliant men who were deeply concerned about the long-range prospects of their country…Historians Nancy Isenberg and Andrew Burstein show us how the presidents Adams’ healthy skepticism about human nature and the fragility of government have caused them to be misunderstood and underappreciated.”—BookPage

“[The Adamses’] stubborn, idealistic approaches to government left a lasting imprint on institutions that are being routinely tested and challenged 200 years later.”—NPR

“The Problem of Democracy is the first dual biography of the presidents Adams. Their entwined stories are told with authority and style by co-authors Andrew Burstein, a prolific historian of the early republic, and Nancy Isenberg, biographer of Aaron Burr and author of White Trash (2016), a pioneering examination of class in America. As ambitious as their protagonists, Mr. Burstein and Ms. Isenberg offer a frankly revisionist “lesson in myth busting,” portraying their subjects both as latter-day Ciceros and as victims of the “cult of personality” they blame for distorting modern-day elections as well as historical estimates of presidential performance.”—The Wall Street Journal
 
“[A]n informative, often moving, account of the intimate relationship between John and John Quincy Adams…Isenberg and Burstein make a compelling case that the Adamses’ ideas, policies and leadership deserve our attention. As a guide to, if not a model for, addressing the flaws in our democratic processes, including the power of parties and the role celebrity plays in our political culture.”—Pittsburgh Post Gazette

“Fascinating…Isenberg and Burstein find an eerie prescience in the warnings of the Adams presidents, who cautioned that democracy would be ruled by those with the “deepest purse” and that democracy’s great risk was demagoguery…[The Problem of Democracy] is also keenly astute about political theory, politics of the day, and the twisted roots of American democracy.”—The National Book Review

“A top-notch dual biography…An unsettling yet well-presented argument that the failures of John and John Quincy Adams illustrate a disturbing feature of American politics.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“In this daring, lucid, and provocative book, Nancy Isenberg and Andrew Burstein challenge founding myths to reveal democracy as an incomplete, contested, and often distorted ideal.  By exploring the failed presidencies and probing ideas of John and John Quincy Adams, The Problem of Democracy exposes the deep roots of contemporary demagogues and their polarizing deceptions.”—Alan Taylor, author of American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804

“Who better knows the byways between the Revolution and the 1840s, who else could address the politics and the personalities of both John and John Quincy Adamses with such wisdom and verve?  Better than any previous Adams chroniclers, they have identified the essential theme that persisted through both men’s lives: one which concerns us now more than ever.” —David Waldstreicher, editor of The Diaries of John Quincy Adams, 1779-1848

Praise for White Trash:

A New York Times Notable and Critics’ Top Book
Longlisted for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction
NPR’s Book Concierge Guide To 2016’s Great Reads
A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book

“Formidable and truth-dealing…necessary.”—The New York Times

“This eye-opening investigation into our country’s entrenched social hierarchy is acutely relevant.”—O, The Oprah Magazine

“A gritty and sprawling assault on…American mythmaking.”—Washington Post

“An eloquent synthesis of the country’s history of class stratification.”—The Boston Globe 

“A bracing reminder of the persistent contempt for the white underclass.”—The Atlantic 

“[White Trash] sheds bright light on a long history of demagogic national politicking, beginning with Jackson. It makes Donald Trump seem far less unprecedented than today’s pundits proclaim.”—Slate

“Isenberg . . . has written an important call for Americans to treat class with the same care that they now treat race…Her work may well help that focus lead to progress.”—Time  

“With her strong academic background and accessible voice, Isenberg takes pains to reveal classism’s deep-seated roots.”—Entertainment Weekly

“Carefully researched…deeply relevant.”—The Christian Science Monitor 

Praise for Madison and Jefferson:
 
“A monumental account of a fifty-year political partnership… a dual biography of uncommon merit… a superb book that greatly deepens our understanding.” —Kirkus Reviews
 
“A distinguished work, combining deep research, a pleasing narrative and an abundance of fresh insights.” —Dallas Morning News

Nancy Isenberg is the T. Harry Williams Professor of American History at Louisiana State University, and the author of the New York Times bestseller White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, and two award-winning books, Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr and Sex and Citizenship in Antebellum America. She is the coauthor, with Andrew Burstein, of Madison and Jefferson.

Andrew Burstein is the Charles P. Manship Professor of History at Louisiana State University and the author of ten previous books on early American politics and culture. These include The Passions of Andrew Jackson, Jefferson’s Secrets, and Democracy’s Muse. He and Nancy Isenberg have coauthored regular pieces for national news outlets.Exordium
Mythic Democracy 

They were the only two chief executives in the American republic’s first half century to be turned out of office after a single term. There is no giant marble memorial to either of them in Washington, D.C.

Alive or dead, they do not embody the beau ideal of the democratic spirit. Who would claim that John and John Quincy Adams speak credibly, meaningfully, to the modern age? We would.

It is precisely because they are not obvious symbols of democracy that we find the two Adamses compelling subjects as we search for a better way to understand how the United States could have proceeded from its ecstatic opening pledge—the magnanimous “spirit of 1776”—to where it is today as a distressed political system. No historical investigator until now has committed to telling in any depth the story of the first father‑and‑son presidents. In these pages, we retie the broken threads of our nearly 250‑year‑old political inheritance. We see the Adamses’ experiences and their unpopular (but not necessarily wrong) positions as an opportunity to present to the politically engaged of our own time an accurate picture of a political heritage too many Americans are loath to address. It includes, but is not limited to, the unfortunate tribalism of the two‑party system.

With a fixation on influence‑buying, poll‑shifting dollars, we live at a moment in history when confusion reigns as to the dependability of all high‑sounding founding‑era rhetoric. If you were to ask an average citizen what America stands for, he or she would most likely repeat something from grade school about freedom and democracy. The simplistic response is not to be mocked, but it does betray what’s wrong: lack of definition. The framers of the Constitution did not erect a democracy. It was not their intent to do so. We must not assume that the United States is a democracy today ei‑ ther. That is why we have written this book. The presidents Adams are our vehicle in an effort to provide a germane, perhaps even urgent, interpretation of the nature of American politics. Persistent myths can no longer suffice.

How, then, do we extend the discussion from what we think we know about the two Adamses to what we should know about them? John Adams, the second president, assumed a lead role in the looming Revolution, vocally defending the Declaration of Independence when it came before the Continental Congress. But that is not what we consider most memorable about him. John Quincy Adams, the sixth president, was the first president not to have been old enough to take part in the Revolution; he stood before the Supreme Court in 1841 and argued valorously in order to win freedom for the kidnapped Africans who had dispatched their captors on board the Amistad. But that is not what we consider most memorable about him. The best reasons we find for remembering the Adamses are those that concern their stubborn insights into human psychology.
They understood the tricky relationship between human nature and political democracy, and how emotionally induced thought often undermined social and political justice.

To the extent that their critique has been dislodged from America’s proud history, it is because it does not comport with the ecstatic, celebratory, self‑congratulatory script that grew into the political faith we know as “American exceptionalism.” If the emotive writer Thomas Jefferson planted the seeds of exceptionalism (“this whole chapter in the history of man is new,” he pronounced), the presidents Adams cultivated a cautionary, less intoxicating political science favoring a balance of interests to counteract those urges that led a ruling few to undemocratic self‑aggrandizement.

The two shared a critical disposition in perceiving (much as we moderns claim we can perceive) the hollowness of celebrity. They saw how image supplanted truth and how the public mind was captured by a clever concept that hid a political agenda. They took note as popular personalities acquired power over citizens’ minds. Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson were perfect examples. But they were neither the first nor the last.

The presidents Adams knew that the powerful in government were elitists, no matter what they called themselves. There were those, like Jefferson, Jackson, and many of their fellow southerners, who skillfully employed a rhetoric that concealed their class interests, their impulse to protect those most like themselves; and there were those in the Adamses’ New England who dismissed all social inferiors without apology. The two Adamses might have been snobs in their own way, but they hated all forms of deception and intimidation, subtle or direct, regardless of its origin. To the endless frustration of father and son, each spent the greater part of his po‑ litical career facing the same charge: of holding an especially dangerous degree of elitist sympathy. Guilty or not, they took a perverse pride in refusing to court public opinion through dishonest means. They were, in short, pained politicians.

The presidents Adams were never very sanguine about the two‑party system, and this may be the most distinguishing feature in their political profile. Others forecast a favorable outcome to party competition, convinced that voters could safely decide which of two candidates best represented the majority’s interests. The Adamses balked at this vision. They decried the hypnotic sway of “party distinctions” and “party spirit” as the bane of political life.

On the day of his own inauguration as president, betting against his father’s prognosis for one brief shining moment, John Quincy Adams allowed that the two parties that dominated the early years of the Republic had both contributed “splendid talents” and “ardent patriotism” along with the more obvious “human infirmity and error.” For these defects, he adjudged, a “liberal indulgence” was due. Inaugural addresses were, then as now, intended to inspire more than to describe a work agenda, and over the course of a long and ruffled career in deliberative bodies John Quincy would nevermore invoke party business without presenting it as a history of manifest intrigue. Political parties did not guarantee democracy to everyone; they merely protected the interests of their most influential members. It is easy to relate to John Quincy’s inauguration day remarks on the “collisions of sentiments and sympathies” that accompanied party rivalry. Father and son identified flaws built into the two‑party system that would prove fatal to the Union in 1860, and that continue to harass political society even now. As conspicuously, they detested the provocative mania parties allowed for, when they roused an intense enthusiasm for select, heroically framed men without objectively assessing their merit first.

Few understand how much the Adamses worried about the emergence of one or another form of aristocracy in America, whether it was a moneyed oligarchy or a slave‑owning planter contingent that spoke with a single voice. Any faction that held outlandish power over laws and law‑making threatened good government. Their cure for malignant control was to be found in institutional solutions aimed at simultaneously mitigating personality‑driven considerations and preserving a balance of power across social classes.

To synthesize, then, as much as this book centers on the Adamses’ still fertile, endlessly rewarding world, it reassesses the roots of the fractured democracy of today. It tackles misperceptions, beginning with our common assumptions about democracy’s historical inevitability as a function of ethical progress. It challenges the orthodox American faith in “government by the people.” That hallowed phrase explains nothing. It ignores the real question: Who makes the wheels of power turn?
US

Additional information

Dimensions	1.2000 × 5.4000 × 8.4000 in
Imprint	Penguin Books
ISBN-13	09780525557524
ISBN-10	0525557520
Author	Andrew Burstein, Nancy Isenberg
Audience	General / adult
BISAC	HIS036040, BIO011000
Subjects	revolutionary war books, books on founding fathers, books on trump, autocracy, history of democracy, the problem of democracy, nancy isenberg, andy burstein, cult of personality, john quincy adams biography, democracy in america, andrew jackson, white trash, BIO011000, john quincy adams, american revolution books, HIS036040, gifts for history buffs, revolutionary war, presidents, authoritarianism, Totalitarianism, white house, democracy, republican, founding fathers, donald trump, books for dad, john adams, thomas jefferson, american history