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John Quincy The trait that broke a presidency

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Listen to Presidential at http://wapo.st/presidential

This transcript was run through an automated transcription service and then lightly edited for clarity. There may be typos or small discrepancies from the podcast audio.

CHARLES EDEL: His mother and father told him from the time he was a really, really little boy that it was his job to carry the family name, to serve the .

But they are much starker in their language. I mean, these are good Puritan traits that they want to bring out in their son. So, he sails across the Atlantic when he's not even ten with his father in wartime conditions. They're chased by British schooners. And he gets letters from his mom, constantly, that say something along the lines of: 'Keep your morals. It's really important to the public and to me. If you don't keep your morals, it would have been better that you went down to the bottom of the ocean.'

He gets letters from his father -- he actually has a much closer relationship with his father, in many ways -- that say something along the lines of: 'Considering the advantages that you've been given in life, if you don't rise to the top -- not only of your profession, but of your country -- you will have squandered everything that was given to you.’

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Adams didn't squander everything. He reached the very top to become president of the , just like his father, . But as we'll learn, John Quincy was much more influential on his way up and on his way down than he was during his time at the nation's pinnacle.

I'm Lillian Cunningham, and this is the sixth episode of Presidential.

PRESIDENTIAL THEME MUSIC

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: That was Edel speaking at the beginning. He's a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, but he's currently serving in the State Department. He's also the author of the book, “Nation Builder: and the Grand Strategy of the Republic.”

Now, this episode is, of course, about our sixth president: John Quincy Adams. But perhaps what this episode is really about is a single unique and all-important presidential leadership trait -- and that is the ability to work with Congress. We're about to see how lacking that one trait can break a

Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 1 presidency.

But first, let's take a step back for a moment and revisit what's been going on up until now. The United States has declared and secured its independence from England, and we've had five American presidents already. The country itself is not only becoming more powerful on the global stage, but it's actually getting physically bigger. It's buying up territory so that it can expand from the east coast all the way toward .

Now, John Quincy Adams has had a front-row seat for all of this. He was alive as a young boy during the . And, of course, his dad John Adams was one of the founding fathers. Now, when John Quincy is only 26-years old, he serves as a diplomat abroad while George is president. And then again, he serves as a diplomat when his father John Adams is president and when is, too.

By the time was president, John Quincy Adams is named . We haven't really been talking about him in earlier episodes, but he is actually behind a lot of the territorial expansion and the big diplomatic moments we've been seeing up until now. In fact, he was so skilled at diplomacy that, today, there are portraits of John Quincy Adams all over the State Department. And actually, one of the main diplomatic reception rooms there is also named after him.

CHARLES EDEL: Particularly among those who study and trace foreign policy, his name is really well-known. I mean he's certainly considered the most successful, maybe the second most, but generally tops the list of most successful secretaries of state. He was in office for eight years straight. Most surveys posit him as the central player on foreign policy for the entire 19th century. And that's because he's enormously successful as a diplomat.

I mean -- his accomplishments as secretary of state. He not only writes the . He also is the first person to push for and secure American territorial expansion all the way out to the Pacific. So he has a really good run of it. If you know Adams for anything, you know him for his most famous speech -- that America should not go forth in search of monsters to destroy. This has been endlessly quoted. In fact, it might be one of the most quoted phrases in all of U.S. foreign policy .

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: And so what is it that particularly drew you to studying John Quincy Adams?

CHARLES EDEL: So, many, many years ago, when I was working at the Council on Foreign Relations in City, my old boss handed me a very small book and made the argument in this very small book that there were three grand strategists in our nation's history -- really, three grand strategic . The first being John Quincy Adams. The second being Franklin Roosevelt. And the third, maybe not as a grand strategist, but what George W. Bush was doing, the argument went, was not totally ahistorical, but did draw on certain trends from earlier in American history.

The most interesting part of that book by far -- because that's really a somewhat controversial argument, at least that latter part -- was the first: that John Quincy Adams was the primary architect, the primary strategist, of America's growth to power throughout the entire 19th century, laying down the lines all the way into the 20th century. I thought that was a fabulously interesting argument, and I wanted to see if it was true.

Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 2

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: OK, so if John Quincy Adams is one of the grand strategists in American history, why do you think it is that so many Americans don't think of him as one of our great presidents or, you know, probably don't even really know much about him?

CHARLES EDEL: A couple of different . First of all, he's not a founder per se. John Adams, people remember. John Quincy Adams, a little bit less. Second, maybe we don't like political dynasties. So, that's a little bit of a point why there. But then, I think more importantly, is he's a one-term president. He's the only one-term president other than his dad until you get to much later on.

And I would go further and say that his presidency is more or less a failure. I mean, almost every single policy that he rolls out and advances as president fails. So, that's one real why most Americans don’t know him. I mean, you know the name. But he's lower on the list.

He's also not a particularly pleasant personality. And there's something to be said for that, too. For those people who have read David McCullough's biography of John Adams or have seen that wonderful HBO series -- if you remember John Adams, there a couple of shining characteristics of John Adams. He's smart. He knew it. He wanted you to know that. And as you might anticipate, he was pretty annoying about that. Well, all these traits are carried out to the nth degree by his son. But he has none of the mellowing and humor that his father has.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: You know him very well. Now would you set him up on a blind date with someone you knew?

CHARLES EDEL: It would depend who I was setting him up on a date with. I don't know, I like you - - I'm not sure that I want to say I would. Maybe? I've spent a lot of time with old J.Q.A. and I would say, that – look, he doesn't suffer fools gladly. He's irascible. He has a very challenging relationship with his wife for the first 30-plus years of their marriage. But he is brilliant. He's interesting. He's fascinating to talk to -- when he's not feeling bad for himself, which is often. He is one of the best conversationalists there are.

I mean, it's interesting that when foreign dignitaries come to the United States…and I'm talking about really, the biggies -- Charles Dickens, , the Marquis de Lafayette. They all make sure that number one on their social agenda is getting together with John Quincy Adams. Not only because he is a great conversationalist, but because his views of the United States and of foreign policy are so expansive and so interesting. I mean, this is a pretty spectacular man that, when you can engage him, those who were close to him -- you know, both but some politicians too, and also those he advocated on behalf of -- thought he was just spectacular. But he was cold. He was remote. His own son said he was impenetrable. And his grandson, the famous historian , said that he had an inner nature so complex that he was an enigma to all of his contemporaries.

What that means for your or his dating life, I'm not really sure. And this is can't really speak to, his dating life. But I will say that not only is he interesting, as we talked about -- he can speak multiple languages -- but here's an interesting one: You probably have a mental image of him as a little bit rotund, and that's an 's kind of trait. But he is a very vigorously healthy president. He will walk to Congress and time himself every time. But what he was particularly hung up about was walking down to the Potomac, stripping off all his clothes -- he'd keep a pair of green goggles on --

Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 3 and hopping in for a half-an-hour to an hour-long swim.

There are apocryphal tales of a reporter -- an enterprising young reporter, a female reporter, who could not get an interview with him -- who, when he makes it back to the shore one day, says, 'Mr. Adams, I have your clothes. Would you like to give me that interview now?' I can't find any evidence for it, but it's a great story.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Alright. Well, we're going to switch topics. We're going to switch topics here and back up to how he became president. Let's plant ourselves in the year 1824.

J.Q.A. a has been secretary of state for all eight years while Monroe was president. And now there's a new election. By this point, the country is going through a time of relative peace and stability. The politics aren't even as bitter at the moment as they used to be. There's really only one political party anymore, and that's the Democratic-Republican Party, which is the party that started.

So, we have this new election and there are four candidates, who are really technically all part of the same party; but they kind of represent different factions of it. Anyway, the candidate who gets the most votes is . He's the self-made man from the South who's been gaining fame as a military hero. But Jackson doesn't have enough votes to have the majority. So the House of Representatives gets to decide who's ultimately elected to be president and they choose one of the other candidates, which is, of course, John Quincy Adams.

Technically the process is fair, according to the rules at the time. But Jackson and his supporters are in an uproar. They say there must have been a . Basically, they think John Quincy must have bribed the speaker of the House, who's . They think he said, 'Henry, if you make me president, I'll make you my secretary of state.’

CHARLES EDEL: Adams does, afterwards, name Clay as his secretary of state as his first political appointment. In some ways, that tanks his presidency before it even begins because in many ways it has the taint -- whether or not it's real -- of a quid pro quo, which Jackson supporters are happy to fan the flames of.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: This election basically lights the match that reignites bitter politics. Jackson supporters convince most of Congress to just gang up against J.Q.A. and block every single thing that he tries to do as president.

And John Quincy isn't helping matters. He doesn't approve of that type of partisan politicking, and he thinks he's above it. So, he just refuses to play the game with them. But now he's a president who has basically no political support. And it's at a time that he really needs it because he comes into office with this vision for the most progressive plan the country has yet seen.

He has this whole strategy for how the government is going to build national roads and schools and research centers and military . That seems pretty normal to us today, but back then people were like, ‘You want the government to do what?!’ He's just so convinced that this is the right thing that he doesn't even bother to be politically delicate or compromising. He just walks right into a hostile Congress where this idea is unpopular and lays it all out for them.

CHARLES EDEL: He is not willing to do what is politically necessary, even as he understands the

Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 4 politics are shifting, and shifting in a much more partisan fashion.

He just can't bring himself to do it because it is simply a betrayal of what he thought he was meant to do. And it's, you know, in some ways, it's very tragic. You watch Henry Clay, who's probably the most astute political operator of the day as secretary of state, as primary political adviser to the president, telling Adams -- there's record of this – ‘some of these policies that you're advocating I totally agree with. But you cannot say this. The populace is not buying you and it is way too bold.’

CHARLES EDEL: This is not the only person who said this. In fact, his entire cabinet tells him on his first inaugural address, 'This is the most progressive vision of government we've ever seen. Scale it back. You know, implement some of it. Shelve some of it. But don't push this forward.' And Adam says, 'You know what? I'm not running for a higher office. I was willing to make compromises on the way to get to being president. What am I waiting for?’ He ignores their, I would argue, very good political advice. And just as they had predicted, the long knives are out for him from the beginning.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Here's Fred Kaplan on the phone. He's the author of, “John Quincy Adams: American Visionary.”

FRED KAPLAN: Well, one of the things, I think, that we can learn today about the challenges of being an effective president is how difficult it is to be an effective president if you have strong principles and believe deeply in the desirability of making significant changes in our complex political system -- in which the president is not an independent actor but has to deal with a Congress and how a Congress can, in effect, not only limit but neuter a president's ability to make transformational changes.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: I asked Charles Edel if he thinks that this has to do with a leadership deficiency that John Quincy Adams has, or if his ineffective presidency is really just to be blamed on the external circumstances of having a stonewalling Congress?

What about his sort of failure as president is that he didn't have the temperament and the leadership traits for that role versus just the external circumstances?

CHARLES EDEL: You know, it's a great question because most people who look at Adams see a great disjunction, right? I mean, he's enormously successful as secretary of state. And after the presidency, he's an enormously successful congressman, opposing in an increasingly loud voice slavery. So then, how do you explain his presidency? Because he's really not successful. And if you read his journals as he goes through this -- he's an extensive diarist -- he's massively, I mean, almost clinically depressed while he is president. That's not his normal reaction to events. So how do you explain this presidency? Because it seems really different than the other stages.

You know, part of this is temperament. He is an advocate. He's dogged. He is, much like his father, the smartest person in the room and almost unbearable in letting everyone know that. In some ways, he’s perfectly suited to be a policy advocate, right? Sink your teeth into an issue, pursue it as hard as you can, take on all the counterarguments and kind of shut them down with your amazing rebuttals. And straight through his tenure as secretary of state, he is constantly a lone voice in the Monroe cabinet that wins on major issues -- not on every single one, but he's such a dogged and tenacious and logically persuasive advocate, that he's really well suited for that position.

Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 5 Whether or not that type of personality is the same type of personality that is constitutionally well suited to make compromise, that's an open question. And in his case, I think it serves him not quite as well. Temperamentally, he just isn't willing to take on advice or compromise where he should.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Compromise. This is the big question about presidential leadership that John Quincy Adams leaves us. When should a president compromise or not compromise? How great is a plan if you can't make any of it happen? Nearly 200 years after J.Q.A.'s time in the , the art of compromise is still one of the toughest skills for presidents to master.

Katie Zezima is a colleague of mine at The Washington Post. She's covered the White House for us, and now she's out on the campaign trail covering the election.

Alright, so Katie. Obviously campaigning was not the same back then as it is now, but I imagine that what we saw with John Quincy Adams's election is still an issue in some ways, right? That contentious and bitter elections can spill over into someone's presidency and make it really hard for them to effectively govern?

KATIE ZEZIMA: I think campaigns are always pretty bitterly fought now, and they always get kind of nasty at certain points. But the reality is that being on the campaign trail and saying what you're going to do, and then getting into the White House and attempting to do something are two totally, totally different things. President Obama said he was going to close Guantanamo Bay and it's still open almost seven years later. So, it's just really not always easy to get through the agenda what you say you're going to do on the campaign trail.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Well, so what about specifically that question of working with Congress? Seeing what you did of what a president has to navigate in order to get his vision and his plans through Congress, let's go back to John Quincy Adams's time. He has a stonewalling Congress. Everyone's basically decided to gang up on him and not let any of his ideas through. Is there anything that a really great presidential leader could do in that circumstance? I mean, is it John Quincy Adams's fault, in some way, that he couldn't get around that?

KATIE ZEZIMA: Well, he had such a contentious way of getting in. In some ways, from the beginning, it was cooked. They picked him. But, you know, also his personality wasn't the type where he was going along to get along. He wasn't going to compromise. He was pretty set in his ways. He knew exactly what he wanted to do, and Congress didn't want to do that.

And the reality is you need a little bit of trying to meet people in the middle -- at least attempting to work across the aisle a little bit -- in order to get things done. President Obama hasn't had the greatest relationship with Congress, either, you know. He had a speech on bipartisanship recently where he talked a bit about it. And that's why you see some of his orders and executive actions -- because he hasn't been able to do this stuff legislatively, so he's just kind of done it on his own.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: We seem to have a really complicated relationship with the word compromise. Overall, as an American people, we seem to send mixed messages about whether we want that or not from our leaders.

KATIE ZEZIMA: This is actually one of the most interesting things I found on the campaign trail. I

Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 6 find it so fascinating how most people today are saying -- especially, I cover the Republican race, and people are saying – ‘we want someone who's just going to go in and give them hell and shake up Washington and all of the entrenched interests.’

I cover Senator Ted Cruz, and he calls himself an uncompromising conservative and he wants to shake up the Washington cartel and people really respond well to this. They're very excited to hear it. But there are questions too from people who say, 'Well, you know, you're going to go in and you're going to shake things up. But how are you going to actually get anything done? You need to kind of work across the aisle and you need to have relationships with these people.'

The way he answers it is he says, ‘I have worked with Democrats before, and I have worked with other Republicans before.’ People also point out he's not very well liked on Capitol Hill. But, there is this kind of two sides of people right now -- this idea of not compromising and going into Washington and shaking up the establishment versus actually getting work done is something I think is on the minds of a lot of voters.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: When you look at John Quincy Adams's time in office and his challenges in office, is there anything else that still rings true to you today?

KATIE ZEZIMA: Well, you know, I think the president has a specific personality. And John Quincy Adams, he knew what he wanted to do. He had all of these big plans, and he wasn't willing to compromise to get them done, and he wasn't able to because of that. And I think that definitely still rings true -- this idea that the president often has one idea and Congress often has another idea, and meeting in the middle isn't always happening. That's something that we've definitely seen multiple times since his presidency.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: In some ways, this is the leadership trait at the root of how John Quincy Adams can be so successful in so many other roles, but not as president.

I spoke more with Charles Edel about this.

CHARLES EDEL: Adams is a really good conceptual thinker -- one of the best that there is. And he has a very clear vision of what he wants for the republic. He's able to prioritize between competing demands. He's a fantastic political and writer, but not necessarily so good at taking the political temperature of the republic.

Being a strategist means both conception and execution. I think he's got the conception part down. I think the execution part is wanting when he is president. He's not willing to make those trade-offs and compromises. He wants to have his vision pure. And so, in some ways, when he deals with public opinion, which is a necessary part of being a presidential leader, he has no aptitude for pulsing where it is.

So, to your question, what it means to be an effective president -- it is not only having a strategic conception, which I think is of paramount importance, but also being able to act along those prioritized interests in a way that you can gain traction, bring the people in who you need to.

I mentioned that Clay was an adviser. comes down from New York state -- a terrific politician -- and says, 'Look, I can start organizing people for you on this. We see the Jacksonians are beginning to organize their own political clubs. We can do this, too, and I think we can defeat

Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 7 them in a number of ways.’ And [Adams] says, 'I won't have this type of conversation.' The president should be above a lot of those things, but he can't be disengaged from them.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Here's Fred Kaplan again.

FRED KAPLAN: One of the things John Quincy Adams had learned from his father is that integrity was everything. Moral rectitude and independence of character were the standards by which he wanted to be judged and to judge himself.

John Adams was a more spontaneous and free-flowing character than his son. John Adams had a gift for conversation and for effusiveness and for outspoken liveliness that John Quincy Adams, his son, did not have. And perhaps somewhat as a reaction to his father -- who he thought was misjudged and mistreated by his contemporaries, especially when he was defeated by Thomas Jefferson in the election of 1800 -- probably John Quincy Adams developed some of the casing around his personality, the armor that he wore in daily life to protect himself, to make himself less vulnerable to the kinds of criticism that his father received. Because in John Quincy Adams’s view, his father was too open and too engaged in a way that made him vulnerable.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: But disengaging didn't work either. Over the course of J.Q.A.'s struggling first term, Jackson has organized a strong base of support and has started a new political party, the Democratic Party.

He obliterates John Quincy Adams in the next election -- just obliterates him and sweeps him out of office before J.Q.A has had a chance to make any real on his agenda.

FRED KAPLAN: When John Quincy Adams was defeated for re-election in 1828, he went understandably into a funk -- got quite depressed and wondered what he was going to do with the rest of his life. Among other concerns he had was his self-awareness that his whole life had been devoted to public service. He had been brought up to believe that public service was the highest priority that any citizen could have.

His biggest anxiety and concern was: Could he possibly have a post-presidential life in the years that were remaining to him, in which he could be reasonably happy without at the same time being engaged in a public life and a public career and doing things for his country? And he tried, when he retired to Quincy, , to engage himself totally and happily in reading and in writing, in scholarship and writing a biography of his father. And he discovered, in a reasonably short time, that this was not satisfactory -- that he felt an emptiness. That he felt a lack of mission.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: So what ends up happening? John Quincy Adams returns to public service. He becomes a congressman. And listen, this is pretty astounding. It's the first and the last time that a former president has ever done so after his time in the White House.

He serves in Congress for 18 years. And he dedicates the bulk of his effort there to the fight against slavery.

CHARLES EDEL: He's learned from being president. He is a much better gauger of public opinion and where it stands, particularly on slavery. So, he's willing to harness public opinion, be out in front of it, but not too far out in front of it; harness several more radical politicians, who are abolitionist-leaning, to broadcast things. I mean, he's much better at doing what he couldn't do as

Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 8 president. Now, partially, that's because he's a congressman. And he becomes increasingly in many ways a single-issue congressman, which he finds all consuming.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: So, do you think he actually was a better congressman for having served as president?

CHARLES EDEL: Yeah, I'm thinking about that. I think the answer has to be yes. He's simply better at fighting and harnessing public opinion because of how he has failed previously. I mean, it is spectacular to understand what he does when he is congressman. He goes in, and slavery is one of several issues, but increasingly becomes the issue. What he does -- so, I'm going to give you a seventh grade quiz, which you may or may not remember: the , right?

Slavery has become so controversial that you can't say the 'S' word on the floor of Congress. You'll be censured for it. So, he thinks this is appalling and is yet another way that the southern politicians are leading the nation astray from promoting liberty. They can't even discuss things. There's not even liberal debate.

So, at one point, he sets himself up to be censured. I mean, he rolls out a petition. This is an ongoing eight-year battle that he has with the gag rule, and he ultimately wins it. But, a great instance is: He sets himself up to be censured by rolling out petitions that are so controversial and so beyond the pale in some ways, that southern congressmen jump up and say, 'Censure him!' And he said, 'Oh, you want to censure me? Well, I have to defend myself. I'm going to put myself on trial because you want to censure me or maybe kick me out of Congress' -- which maybe they do, maybe they don't. And then, he gives two weeks straight of floor speeches -- two weeks straight of floor speeches.

He also makes sure that every one of the speeches that he is making are written as quickly as possible after and distributed as widely as possible, so these begin to gain traction in the North, as well as toward southern supporters. So, from a procedural , he's more willing to fight, and he's better at it; and knowing that it's not only in Congress, but also in the larger American polity that he has to do this.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: How is it that slavery becomes the real focus of his?

CHARLES EDEL: What happens during his presidency causes him increasingly to reflect that it's the issue that America has to deal with. So two touchstones for that.

One is before he's even president. He's secretary of state when the controversy breaks out. Now, the way that cabinet meetings happened back in the day is that the president, on major issues, would solicit the opinions of every major cabinet officer. And Adams comes out stridently and said, 'The federal government has a role and a stake in prohibiting the spread of slavery.' Of course, this is the issue that later runs on. He's overruled. He is overruled fundamentally in that cabinet. That's one of the major debates that he loses as secretary of state.

And in his diary, the longest passages -- and I should say, there are almost 17,000 pages worth of passages -- to my mind, when I was doing my research, I did not find any longer nor any more anguished passages than in the days that he's debating that in the cabinet. And when I say longer: He's writing 10, 15 pages every night detailing not only what's happening in the cabinet, but him understanding all of a sudden the major vast implications. This is 1820 and he is seeing a civil war

Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 9 coming.

That's during his time as secretary of state. During his presidency, he's increasingly opposed by a second party that arises -- the Jacksonians -- where in retrospect, at least, he sees more and more slave interests in it. So, increasingly, when he looks back at his presidency, he sees that slavery is the cause, which is stopping the forward progress of the nation. It's also the cause that shot down his presidency. So, I think for personal vindictiveness reasons and for personal retribution, but also really to advance the vision that he sees for the country, this is the singular issue that he devotes himself to.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: If you listened to our second episode on his father John Adams, you might remember that John Adams took on the really unpopular task of defending British soldiers after the Massacre. Well, we see something similar happened with John Quincy. While he's congressman, John Quincy Adams decides that, pro-bono, he will be the lawyer to defend the African slaves who staged a mutiny aboard the slave ship Amistad. The case goes to the Supreme Court, and J.Q.A. draws on the power of the ideals of liberty and equality set forth in the Declaration of Independence to win them their freedom.

CHARLES EDEL: Just go rent 'Amistad' with playing John Quincy Adams. It is a terrific depiction of him. I think he's got him spot-on. I mean, they don't do Supreme Court arguments like they do back in the day, because it's an eight-hour speech. And he has it published right afterwards.

But the frame of it is: You have to understand the Constitution in light of the principles of the Declaration of Independence. This is a brilliantly simple argument. It is the Gettysburg Address, right? That's Lincoln's argument -- when he says, “four score and seven years ago,” he ain't alluding to the Constitution, but the Declaration of Independence. And what Adams tries to do in that argument is give the Declaration the force of , as opposed to simply principles.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Just about every scholarly analysis of John Quincy Adams gives the same assessment: that his public service in Congress after his presidency is far more powerful than what he ever accomplishes as president. I asked Katie Zezima whether she thinks there's a lesson here.

What's your sense of whether we would be better off if more presidents did what John Quincy Adams did and went into Congress after being president?

KATIE ZEZIMA: I think it would be really interesting and potentially beneficial to have a person who went in and said, 'Hey guys, listen. I've literally been on the other side of this. I know what it takes to actually get this done from their side, and now that I'm here, I know what happens from our side.' So yeah, I think that there could be some benefit. Will it actually happen? I really, really don't think so. I don't think any president is going to go back to Congress. I know President Obama has said that he plans to be drinking out of a coconut on an island when he's out of office, so I highly doubt he'll be going to Capitol Hill anytime soon.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: So, to wrap up, I asked both Fred Kaplan and Charles Edel what they think we would be missing if we never had John Quincy Adams as a president.

FRED KAPLAN: He is to be honored for at least two important things, and one is that he anticipated public policies that eventually came to be characteristic of a hallmark of modern American culture.

Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 10 The other thing for which he is to be remembered and respected -- and about which I wish his influence was even more fully felt -- is for the integrity and the honorableness of his personal character and his public life. I think that John Quincy Adams is an amazingly successful human being and public figure, though his presidency does not carry the full weight of that claim.

CHARLES EDEL: We'd be missing the Pacific Ocean as part of the country -- and that's a little ungenerous, things would probably go that way [anyway]. But, you know, he is the one who structured the broad frame of how we were going to advance. That's pretty important. Second thing that we'd be missing without him -- he was a strident advocate for the United States operating, in some senses ruthlessly, for its national interests; but never forgetting the moral vision that was supposed to illuminate those actions and to which we were supposed to progress towards.

Look, he doesn't live to see the fruition of any of his policies -- certainly on anti-slavery. But he lays the groundwork upon which the broad contours are struck. I mean, Lincoln's political hero was always Henry Clay. I think he's much closer to John Quincy Adams. Not in temperament – Lincoln, you should definitely go on a date with…he was just the best, most moral statesmen that we've ever had -- but, in terms of how one wants to attack slavery, how one wants to go about it. Even the Emancipation Proclamation, which he alludes to 20 years prior to its coming, these are Adams's visions.

And then the last one that I'll say, too, is: It's interesting how to assess a president’s legacy, right? I mean, should you assess it contemporaneously? Should you assess it a couple years out? Or do we look in the broad stroke of history?

Adams himself would admit that he thought his presidency was a failure, particularly the progressive vision that he rolled out for the internal development of the country and the country's citizens. But at what timescale do you measure the implementation of a vision? Because it did fail - - but we can also say in broad strokes that this is the exact contour of what the Whig Party, and then what the Republican Party under Lincoln rolled out while he was president. In fact, it's the most progressive vision of the federal government probably until Franklin Roosevelt's presidency more than 100 years later.

His vision of continental expansion, of America's leading role -- not only in , but in the western hemisphere -- these are all legacies that are not accomplished during his lifetime. But I think we have him to thank for.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: When he's 80-years old, John Quincy Adams collapses on the floor of Congress in the middle of a vote. He's carried upstairs to the Speaker's room inside the Capitol building; and two days later, he dies, still there. The House organized a committee to make arrangements for his funeral, and on that committee was a young congressman. He'd only been in the House for a short time but had heard several of John Quincy Adams's speeches.

That congressman was Abraham Lincoln.

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