John Adams Quotes
I am almost tempted to wish he may be chosen Vice President at the next Election for there if he could do no good, he could do no harm. He has Talents I know, and Integrity I believe: but his mind is now poisoned with Passion Prejudice and Faction.
“he” refers to Thomas Jefferson his political enemy. This quotation illustrates two things. First that the Vice Presidency was perceived as a minor post with no power even by the generation who wrote it. Second, that many of the Founding Fathers viewed political parties—then called “factions”—as dangerous. The “Federalists” were not really an organized political party and certainly they did not think of them as such. But Jefferson thought differently and America’s first and now oldest political party was created by him and his colleagues who thought that the Federalists were not leading the country in the right direction. Note that Adams used the term “poisoned”.
John Adams Letter to his wife AbigailAbigail January 6, 1794
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This quotation illustrates a political phenomenon that used to be common in American politics—the spoils system where government activities, positions, contracts and grants were awarded to the supporters of the winning party and not to the opponents. In modern times government contracts were supposed to have been awarded on the basis of qualifications and price and not conditioned on political support. In this rare quotation, the secretary admitted to violating his own Department’s regulations and using politics as a criteria where existing laws prohibited that.
Before Governor Mecham was impeached, Senator John McCain called for his resignation. After Mecham was impeached for misusing State funds and thwarting investigations of death threats, he commented upon McCain's qualifications for a place on the Republican national ticket:
He like many other Americans had become dissatisfied with the religious, right wing fundamentalist ideology of the George W. Bush administration and the Republicans who controlled Congress until the election of 2006.
Most Americans who felt this way about the 2011 Congress playing “chicken” with the full faith and credit of the United States did not realize that although 2011 had reached a new low, the problem has existed throughout the republic’s existence. Here Ms. Roosevelt complained about the same thing.
A Southern Republican congressman with a voting record that was against minority interest, for the first time in American, interrupted and insulted the President of the United States in the midst of an invited Presidential Address to Congress given by Barack Obama, calling him a liar. Carter, himself a Southerner, recognized the motivation.
He was the chairman of the committee and the he had denied the Democrats equal access to witnesses before the meeting in a patently unfair process. When one of the minority members of the committee complained in the open hearing that the process was unfair this was his response. Most majority committee chairmen do not resort to this kind of unfair practice so this was not generally a typical practice but reflected the bitter hyperpartisanship that the House Republicans were engaging in at the time.
Ideologues and men of strong principles are not open to compromise and often are not persuasive of others. Compromise and persuasion is necessary for success in politics.
John Adams Jr. was an American statesman, attorney, diplomat, writer, and Founding Father who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. Before his presidency, he was a leader of the American Revolution that achieved independence from Great Britain, and he served as the first vice president of the United States. Adams was a dedicated diarist and regularly corresponded with many important figures in early American history, including his wife and adviser Abigail Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
