How John Adams Established Enduring American Customs

Shield of the Republic

Eric and Eliot provide their thumbnail review of the Trump-Harris debate and then welcome their special guest Lindsay Chervinsky, the Executive Director of the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon and the author the new book Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents that Forged a Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2024). They discuss the role of the January 6th insurrection in sparking her interest in the peaceful transfer of power in the United States and the first instance of a transfer via election in 1800. She discusses how this perspective provided new insight into understanding John Adams's Presidency which is frequently depicted as a failure but which successfully resolved the Quasi-War with France in the late 1790s, established the norms of civilian oversight of the military and Presidential command of foreign policy and control of the executive departments of government. They discuss the political intriguing of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson who sought to undermine Adams, the fears of a standing army, the extremism of the "Arch Federalists" and the violent rhetorical excesses of factionalism in the party, the role of the French Revolution and immigration in American politics in the early Republic, and ultimately how Adams put country over party and personal political success to establish the norms of a peaceful transfer of power. Finally, she discusses how the death throes of the Federalist Party (and later the Whigs) might shed light on possible futures for the GOP.
Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents That Forged the Republic:
https://a.co/d/3v539F7
What History Tells Us Might Happen to the Republican Party:
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/history-political-parties-republican-gop
Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.