John Quincy Adams: Know thyself
Leadership lessons of the presidents
If John Quincy Adams had been president a quarter century earlier, his reputation would have been more distinguished. Alternatively, if he had recognized he wasn't cut out for competitive politics, he would be best remembered as America's greatest secretary of state.
Adams's experience serves as a reminder there are two paths to distinction in the public service of a democracy. The first path is the elective one. An individual runs for office, gets elected and performs admirably as president, member of Congress, governor or other elected official.
The second path is the appointive one. A person is appointed by an elected official to be secretary of state, attorney general, federal judge or any one of a great number of appointed officers of the government. Success produces further appointments.
Certain characteristics are shared by successful people in both tracks. Intelligence, diligence, common sense and the like are essential.
But other characteristics distinguish one track from the other. Successful elected officials have to know how to persuade large groups of people, namely voters, to elect them. Typically this requires an effective public presence, sometimes amounting to charisma. Often they have to be willing to tell voters what the voters want to hear. They should avoid lying, but they must know how to shape their messages in the most appealing way. In addition, they must know how to take a punch. They will be criticized. Can they handle the criticism? In more than a few cases, they will be lied about. Can they maintain their composure?
Appointed officials are usually exempt from such negative exposure. They don't have to persuade voters but merely the elected officials who choose them. Their personalities need not be appealing in the same way as those of elected officials. They can master their policy portfolios while leaving the politics of policy to their elected masters.
Quincy Adams’s talents and temperament made him an ideal appointed official, indeed the very best as America's senior appointed official — secretary of state, under James Monroe. But they suited him poorly for the rough and tumble of democratic electoral politics. The misfit became evident even before his inauguration.
The 1824 presidential election was unusual in having four viable candidates. The two-party system of Republicans and Federalists had broken down with the demise of the Federalists in the 1810s. The Republican party was all that remained. Monroe coasted to two elections during this period, which he dubbed “the era of good feeling.”
But the era couldn't last. Ambition never rests. The Republicans divided into factions, with each choosing its favorite as candidate for president. Andrew Jackson was the most popular, still basking in the glory of his victory at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. Adams was the most experienced, with the secretaryship of state occupying the top line of his resume. William Crawford and Henry Clay rounded out the quartet.
Before the 1820s, presidential electors in many states had been chosen by the state legislatures. But by 1824, nearly all states allowed voters to choose electors. This gave an advantage to the popular Jackson, who garnered the most electoral votes, albeit less than a majority. Adams came second, Crawford third and Clay fourth.
When no candidate wins a majority of the electoral votes, the race goes to the House of Representatives, where each state contingent casts a single vote for one of the top three candidates in the electoral voting. Jackson's supporters thought their man should win, having proved himself the most popular of the four. But Clay distrusted Jackson as a hot-headed military chieftain unworthy of the powers of the presidency. Clay threw his support to Adams, which gave Adams the House votes he needed to become president.
The Jackson men were miffed. But what Adams did next utterly outraged them. He appointed Clay secretary of state.
This was a more portentous appointment than it would become later. Each president since Thomas Jefferson had been secretary of state before becoming president. That office served as the steppingstone to the White House. In the eyes of the Jacksonians, Adams had not simply stolen the election from their hero but was preparing to steal the next open election from him as well. The Jacksonians alleged a “corrupt bargain” by which Clay sold his support to Adams in this election in exchange for a head start in a subsequent election.
Adams should have seen this coming. Perhaps he did. But he judged Clay the most capable of the available candidates for secretary of state. He refused to be deterred from an appointment he judged to be in the best interest of the United States, on account of the unwarranted complaints of the Jackson men.
In the sheltered world of appointive politics which he had inhabited thus far, Adams's reasoning would have been sound. But it was suicidal in the boisterous realm of elective politics. The Jacksonians drew energy from their imputations of corruption in Adams's administration. They launched their campaign for a rematch almost before Adams was sworn in. They stymied his agenda and assured his thrashing by Jackson in 1828.
If Adams had known his limits, this would never have happened.
Yet he recouped his self-respect by being elected to Congress from his comparatively genteel Massachusetts district and serving honorably in the House of Representatives until his death in 1848.