Facebook. Com. Check out the listing of the upcoming programs. We have one for members only next week on congressional term limits and programs ranging from the constitutionalism of the civil war to experts of nyu Barry Friedman and on and on, check out the program for our various events. If youre interested in becoming a constitutional member visit the table outside the theater here and again, were late starting and want to get right into the program. And everyone silence your cell phones. So without further ado, were going to be talking about two books here today about john adams and both of them touch upon his account of aristocracy and his life. We have we have john adams republic, the one, the few and the many, a warm National Constitutional Center Welcome to Luke Mayville and richard alan ryerson. [applaus [applause] dick and luke, thank you for being here. Im excited for this conversation. My john adams is inappropriate with my High School Musical 1776, and describes john adams as obnoxious and disliked. Luke, start with you, you spent a lot of time with john adams, how he compared to the other founders . Yeah, i suppose the impression from 1776 is better than the impression of hamilt hamilton that leaves him out entirely. The only brief mentions are leaving him out entirely. I come from the perspective of john adams and what brought me to john adams was the recognition that he wasnt just a founding father figure, president and statesman who also had some ideas about politics. He really was Something Like a political scientists in his own time. Yet, he was a rigorous analytical, political and social thinker and i really came to think that john adams deserved to be thought of among what we think of as the first rate political and social thinkers of American History. So the thinkers you might study in college today, like even in 20th century thinkers like john roles or hannah or wb dubois and those in politics. John adams deserves to be thought of among that list and not just as a historical figure, not just as a basement. And adams really did the major work of Political Science that he wrote, defense of the american constitution was probably the most systematic treatment of constitutional theory ever written by a american. We have other Founding Fathers like James Madison, Alexander Hamilton who wrote, for example, the federalist papers that are also very impressive and first rate political thought, but john adams really more so than any other figure of the time was a political scientist and thats what really engaged my interest. Host in your book, in part you described john adams among the folks of the revolutionary generation as sort of most gripped by the past. You know, luke has talked about him as a political scientist. This actually grows out of his interest in law. He begins, of course, as a lawyer and its often said that a great many of our foundings fathers were lawyers and that is nominally true, technically true. Some of them were lawyers and planters, lawyers and businessmen, lawyers and something else. John adams in his early career was strictly a lawyer, a fulltime, very hardworking lawyer and he became by 1770 when he defended soldiers in the boston massacre, he was already by that time the leading attorney in massachusetts, a role that he held until he got in the continental congress. As a lawyer he was determined very early to master a wide range of fields of law, including the institutes of justinian, so he would learn about continental law and i think it was from this that he began to get into ancient medieval and early modern history and started reading a lot of history and political scientist from europe that his contemporaries did not read. I would point out that one scholar argues that adams was the only one of the foundings fathers who read anything by machiavelli except for the prince and the others read the prince and they had a low opinion of machiavelli. Adams read machiavelli and learned a great deal with him. Thats the way i think he comes into his appreciation for the past. And were going to dig in detail about, here, adams constitutional vision. Just right at the outset, luke, if were looking at john adams as a political thinker, what does his constitution look like broadly speaking . Well, one of the big differences between adams constitutional thoughts and the constitution as we know it is that adams understood the different parts of the government as corresponding to the different parts of society. So, richards book and the title, the one, the few and the many, that society is fundamentally broken down into different parts. And for adams, government was supposed to reflect that, the governor was supposed to reflect Something Like the monarchical of society and then aristocrats of society and the popular chamber that we call house of representatives was supposed reflect the democratic the popular part of society. And thats quite different in a fundamental way from the way that weve many could to think of the relationship between government and society. With the advent of the federalist papers, which are and the kind of arguments for the constitution that we find there, we see a departure from john adams constitutional thought and that people like James Madison and Alexander Hamilton start describing each part of society each part of government as representative of the people as a whole. Theres one American People and even though we have a senate and a house of representatives, they all represent the people, but in different ways. So we find a kind of eclipse in a way in modern constitutional thoughts of this idea that was based on different classes, and john adams, i suggest in the book, is interesting in this current moment because in a way americans in the last several years as especially as economic inequality increases, are becoming again much more interested in class, in the difference that class makes for politics. Thats something that john adams cared a lot about and he cared quite a lot more, i argue, than his contemporaries did, many of his contemporaries. So both of you really explore john adams view of the few of the aristocracy, your book is largely about that, dick, you certainly touch on that as well. Beginning with you, dick, how did john adams understand the few. What did he mean athe aristocracy . Well, one thing i find that adams doing is his thought developed very dynamically on aristocracy, but i think its the surprise to him himself and how much he becomes interested in that. Up until the declaration of independence he had lived in a society, that is the province of massachusetts, that had a very visible aristocracy. He did not, i think, think very consciously about it and if he had thought about it, if hed been asked about it, he would have said, well, yes, these are people with more money, more education, and theyre doing a good job in the various higher positions of massachusetts government, culture, society, education, whatever. He would have defended that particularly in the town he lived in, then now the city of quincy. The big family was the quincy family. He admired them and his own family had been supporters of the quincys for generations. He had no trouble with that. Then the war of independence comes and he suddenly sees many men in massachusetts and all over making a lot of money off the war. I mean, when we think of the war, we think of the great sacrifice of the soldiers on the line and the sailors and the women and children at home and the war brought a lot of suffering for a lot of people. It made a few people very wealthy. These people were supplying the continental army. They were financing the priva privateers that were seizing valuable cargo from british ships. Adams began to look at these people and thought they werent behaving well. They were being too greedy and muscle their way into politics at the highest level and congress and this is something that he every single year for a decade after the declaration, he saw this more and more and sat down to write the defense of the constitutions, which is a defense of the state constitutions in america, as they existed in 1786. The point of that book was to argue for strong executives and to argue that aristocracies were threatening and dangerous, they must be controlled, but they couldnt be avoided. They couldnt be defeated. They couldnt be denied. They had to be controlled and harnessed for an effective republic. Thats what he argues. So, aristocracy is a discovery for him and they would add as he goes on in his life, he begins to see a need to define aristocracy in ways that fit americas culture. No title, no monopolies. Instead, personal equality, family inheritances, various things like this that give some men advantages over others and thats where he ended up on the subject. And luke, you mentioned in terms about economic inequality of today. And a few, we see this across the spectrum from supporters of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders talking about the 1 and President Trump and his supporters talking about a rigged system and draining the swamp. To what degree did adams diagnosis and account of the few similar to what we see in political current today and unique to his own time . One of the surprising moments for me in researching this book was when i was flipping through in an unrelated moment, actually, flipping through a book written in the 1950s by marxist socialist named C Wright Mills who wrote the famous book called the power elite, which is probably the most authoritative study of american socialeconomic elite in the 20th century and in a chapter at the very end hes writing about a certain element of his theory of the power elite and he says theres this figure in American History who pretty much already said all of this and thats john adams and he goes on to, you know, quote john adams, especially another major book that john adams wrote while sitting as vicepresident of the united states. One thing about john adams thinking thats very similar to current contemporary ways of thinking of economic elite, he focused on the power of elites. So and this was very different than his contemporariecontempor to give one example many of his contemporaries thought that the American Revolution had turned decisively against aristocratic titles and the constitution had, you know, completely prohibited titles of nobility. Hadnt he solved the problem of oligarchy and aristocracy . Adams thought even though you had done away with titles, qualities, richard began mentioning, qualities like family name or what he called birth. Qualities like physical beauty and especially wealth would continue to generate a lot of power for elites. And a second part of this, and maybe this is something we can discuss more because its in both of our books, the second part of this is he was very skeptical of the notion that many of his contemporaries, especially Thomas Jefferson had, which was that, yes, we have done away with the old aristocracy, but we have a new aristocracy in america, but its not a dangerous one, but its an aristocracy of talent, a natural aristocracy as opposed to the old aristocracy. We have an aristocracy of talent and virtue. Adams agreed to that notion to a point, but one of the themes of his late writings especially, the later part of his life is this idea actually qualities like wealth and again, birth and beauty, what he called qualities given to us by fortune are much more powerful than qualities like talent and virtue, which are, you know, you could call m mericratic or given. And even writers like jefferson who in other ways were very worried about financial elites and things like this. Host so, dick, we have in adamsaccount an inevitable view, this inevitable aristocratic in a sense, as a matter of constitutional design how did he think we might control and perhaps even harness the few for good purposes . Well, i would have to say i think in terms of adamsstructural solutions to the problem, this may be the weakest part of this whole argument and anyone who reads my book, i think, would see that i am very deeply in love with john adams, theres no doubt about that, but when he came to think about how he would control the aristocracy, he had one solution that made sense, but its certainly opened to criticism over time and that is to have a very powerful executive. Now, he argued that the aristocracy is the the natural enemy of a powerful executive and that a powerful executive is the natural ally of the people and the republic works well when the people and the strong executive Work Together to keep the aristocracy under control and he further said that you could in fact do this by putting the aristocracy in a special constitutional body, the upper house of the legislature, the senate, and they would be in a sense ostracized and you could see them, and one of these is a writing, a swiss writer who praised the british constitution and the ostracism idea may have come in part from that. The reason i say that this is the weakest part of this argument is that first of all, i think the ostracism idea probably doesnt work particularly well. His notion was if you get all of the aristocrats in the senate they wont be in the house of representatives where theyll distort and overawe and intimidate the representatives of less social standing. Once society gets large, you can have so many aristocrats, a hundred persons, and begin to contain them all, theyre going to spill over into the house of representatives and they already have, a long time ago actually. Not recently. So that i see as a weakness. Strength i see in adams is that he is telling people, youve got to admit you have an aristocracy. You cant get rid of it. Theres no way you can get rid of it. So you have to try to be vigilant against the power of an aristocracy. And that lesson, plus his insistence on a very broad publicly funded system of education, putting the two things together, i think gives the best possibility of control of that aristocracy. I mean, there may be basic limits in a wealthy country, which we certainly are, a large country with a lot of economic interests and maybe certain basic limits to how much you can control in economic aristocracy. But adams said you have to try and you have to do what you can about this truth. I just wanted to add to that. I share that, i share the skepticism about adamssolution and one really fascinating points, adams has a beautiful late correspondence, late in life, retirement era correspondence with Thomas Jefferson i highly recommend if theres one set of adamsreadings you should read this. But at one point adams is writing to jefferson about aristocracy and he insists its Something Like his ostracism scheme and jefferson responds with and says Something Like, you think that with the senate you can coordinate the aristocrats, but whats much more likely is that the aristocrats were capture the coordinates and so what he meant was is what you are basically doing is handing over government to the aristocrats by ensuring that they have one part of it and then theyre going to likely have the other part. And i think that adams never really had a compelling response why that wouldnt happen and i think arguably, Something Like that has happened. Most of congress is millionaires. The vast majority, i think, is millionaires. And, but and i agree with richard on this, i think that the lesson is isnt so much the specific institutions that adams proposed, but its that its too raise the question of how is it that we as a society, we as a political system, build institutions or failed to build institutions that can somehow counter balance the power of social and economic elites. So, i would suggest one institution thats been very relevant in this record in the 20th century is labor unions that served as Something Like that served the role of Something Like what john adams imagined the Popular Assembly is doing. They were a Political Force in society that represented the lower orders and counter balanced the power of the higher orders. Political parties used to do, arguably, a much more effective job than they do today. At organizing the interests of middle class and working class people. There is a time when people when journalists described the Democratic Party as, you know, the Franklin Roosevelt era, described the Democratic Party and in the house of representatives that it dominated as the house of lords for the parole prolitariot. Part of working class in politics. Thats not the case anymore, many parties are dominated by economic belief, but these are the questions, i thinks that reading adams encourages us to ask. Host and you mentioned adamsvision of a strong constitutional system. Where did his few of the strong executive come from . When did he begin to adhere to this and did it develop at all over time . It did develop over time, but actually he came to the belief in the strong executive first, that is before he started even thinking very much about an aristocracy. In one way its a little curious that he did because he didnt have much use for the royal governors of massachusetts, particularly Thomas Jefferson who he hated. And hutchinson was the last one and the general that clamped down and failed completely. But adams, i think, he thought that a virtues executive, an executive chosen by the people could be could be effective. An important part of this was he didnt want the executive to be chosen by the legislature and right as the revolution was beginning to heat up,the various provinces, as they moved to independent statehood decided well have legislatures and then the legislatures will choose the governor or even choose an executive council, a quorum executive. You want one executive, you want that chosen independently from the legislature. So when he got his chance to show how it should be done in 1779 he drafted the massachusetts constitution and in that constitution the governor was elected annually by the entire voting population. So, he had a separate power base from the legislature. And then he had a senate and a house of representatives, and he thought all working together that this would work fairly well. I mean, its he admitted that it wouldnt be perfect. But he toward the end of his life, he got optimistic. He said in a letter to benjamin wright, the romans and the british have handled best the problems of aristocracy in the government and he said we may do better than either. He wasnt sure of that. Some days he said wed do great, but other days a disaster. He was hopeful these mechanisms would work, the best way i could put it. Host obviously, we have the presidency detailed in article two of the constitution and the development of presidency and speaking of a rise of an imperial rise in the 20th and 21st century. And you heard how dick presented adamsvision of the executive. What might you make of the development, closer to the stronger executive or are they similar . I think its this is something that i am very skeptical about as a part of the theory. I think if you want to be very generous towards adamsnotion, you can cherry pick American History and point to Theodore Roosevelt and the factors of great wealth and a need for a strong president to bring them to heel. You can talk about Franklin Roosevelt, you know, describing the economic loyalists and welcome saying i welcome their hatred and, you know, taking on the very antagonistic relationship with the economic elite of his time. But there would be i would imagine there would be it would be just as easy to come up with examples of collusion, economics and president s. And perhaps richard mentioned the influence of machiavelli. One clear element of machiavellis influence, machiavelli thought that executives always have to choose whether to ally with the few or ally with the many. And its not and machiavelli recommends that executives ought to ally with the many because the people will be there, the most stable basis of support. And adams seemed to believe that as well, but it doesnt seem like theres a clear mechanism that would force or compel the executive to be the defender of the people. And i dont see that if anything, i see the development of the imperial presidency from world war ii to now. Perhaps only, only making that problem more and more velt because in some ways the president amasses more and more pow power, but it doesnt seem like there is a mechanism in place to determine on whose behalf that power will be wielded. Host did you talk a little about the conventional wisdom about john adams both in his own day and among historians, when he left for europe he came as a true republican and came back as a true and could you talk about that . I can id like to speak about the issue of executive first. Host oh. I think as luke does, i tend to agree that a problem that adams didnt forsee as much as he should have is the power of war and what war would do to the executive, what is done in this country to the executive. Executives always have the choice of allying more with popular interests and some of our president s have done so. Some in the past and some more recently, but they also always have, since the 19 since 1941, they have at their disposal a large military, a large military Industrial Complex that eisenhower warned against directly in his Farewell Speech in 1960. And many president s, i think, have really succumbed to the what they see as what has to be done to keep the country safe, theyve succumbed to the influence of the power elite, the military industrial elite and various different forms. And thats something i think adams didnt forsee and im not sure i have any particular solution for it, but to get to your question, when and this is a big part of it, when did adams come to have these views and why did he come to have these views about the executive and the aristocracy . The, what i call traditional or orthodox tradition of interpretation is that he once he sailed to europe as an orthodox republican no particular interest in aristocracy and wasnt thinking that much about a powerful executive. Came back as an admirer of aristocracy, european aristocracy and admirer of monarchy. Its easy to sigh why his critics said that. In the constitution theres a section on monarchal republic. He has two, Great Britain and poland. One successful, one not successful at that time, but adams had actually had that belief about Great Britain frommed a least a year before the declaration of independence. People didnt notice it. In his writings in 75, in his wonderful little pamphlet on government in 76, he made it clear that he thought britain Constitutional Monarchy was in effect a republic and people didnt notice that. As for the aristocracy, he got very concerned about that before he went to europe. The concern grew. It was not because european courts turned his head or anything like that, it was a result of anxieties and problems that he saw at least as early as the mid 1770s in america and i would add on aristocracy, he becomes concerned with aristocracy exclusively by viewing americans who he feels are aristocratic and usually in a negative sense. He writes to abigail, when hes in france, in his first Diplomatic Mission and hes having trouble with Benjamin Franklin and trouble with lee and a few other people and he says to her, i must say in perfect sincerity i have no i have no difficulties with the french nation. All of my difficulties arise entirely from america. And so that is, i think, from then on, its always american aristocrats hes worried about and although we havent gotten into this yet, i would say that he really stands out as saying we have an aristocracy in the 80s, the 90s, and people like jefferson and madison and washington, major slave holders, major land holders i go is a no we dont have any trouble with aristocrats other than hamilton and adams couldnt convince them. Host weve talked a lot about the one, the few. Look, what did adams think was the role of the many in sort of the ideal constitutional system and how did it relate to sort of the trends we see in american constitutional development, you know, from the 1790s onward once hes back on the american scene . Well, this is something often overlooked by adam adams critics. His critics especially as the years went on, he kept talking about the few and the one. The aristocracy and Something Like the monarchical. And america thought they had gotten rid of those things altogether. So, it was often a point of confusi confusion, his critics saw him as the few and the one, but adams did think that the many was maybe the was an important and maybe the most important element of the constitutional system because one of the central features of a republic, what makes a constitutional political system a republic is that there is real representation in politics of relatively ordinary people. And that is what popular assemblies were supposed to achieve. They were supposed to actually make the interests, the views, the feelings of ordinary people present in government. And in that sense, so in that sense, adams is premodern because in his time, you know, revolutionaries were starting to think that, wellkno, no, th preferences of government should be of many not just one part so it makes adams in that sentence, but makes adams, you know, in a sort of critique of our own politics because we can still ask today is there even one part of our system that substantially represents the interests of ordinary people . And so, in that sense, that that was the the core feature of a republic for adams and when he wrote the defense of the constitution, full of the histories of republicans and the stories of the various ways that aristocrats throughout history had flooded into popular assemblies and corrupted them and eliminated that core feature of republican politics, which is the genuine representation of the people and i think that as adams went on later into his life, he thought he very much saw the danger of that of that happening in the united states. Host thank you so much for that, luke. Now, im going to turn to our audiences superb questions as always. Thank you so much for these. Start with this, what was john adams reaction to the revolution . He was generally pretty negative about it. He i think this has been exaggerated by some of his critics who they liked to think he was really obsessed with the french revolution, with its the great power of the single s camerale assembly and getting into orgy of violence and rein of terror. He did have those feelings about the french revolution, but at first he was skeptical, but willing to give the french revolution a little bit of a break and his discourses are written early in the french revolution, he was skeptical, but he said that the real problem was the National Assembly in france was unwilling to admit any kind of role of the few, even though he said, in fact, they were the few, that if they were an assembly, they were representatives, they were select and he says, they stated everything aristocratic in their culture. Does this mean theyre going to wipe away all records of the glorious deeds of the National Assembly . He didnt think they would. Later, much later, i have to add one thing to this, i think a very funny remark and i did close my book with it. He wrote to Benjamin Rush and he said, have i not been engaged in mischief all of my life . Have i not brought on the American Revolution, which led to the french revolution . And then he adds, but i meant well. [laughte [laughter] so thats great. Luke, anything you want to add about the french revolution . But ill add this question, what might adam think about how political campaigns are funded . Ill start on the french revolution. One of the most interesting records we have of ada adams thinking about politics, the marginal notes that he left in books that he read. So, for example, he intricately went through the books, and one was mary wolfcrats history of the french revolution and what i found interesting of the french revolution, where wo wolfcraft looking at the ways theyre tearing down, noebt and clergy set apart and distinguished from the rest of the citizenry, and adams has the provocative thought that, well, isnt this a case when you tear down all of the existing distinctions in society you still leave one standing that will inevitably stand, which is wealth . So isnt this a case that there will still be Something Like a natural aristocracy of wealth, even after you have taken all of the honor of the various offices of government . And i found that to be a very provocative critique of the french revolution because it seems to correspond to some of the populous energy today which would have us take all of the honor out of public service. You know, put really strict term limits, limits on the number of terms and the duration of offices in order to, in a way, to denigrate the honor of Public Office and make Office Holders merely citizen legislators as opposed to true, you know, political professionals of some kind with their own honor. And i think adams might have a thought on that that this kind of populous intention could backfire because when you take the honor out of public service, you leave standing the honor of wealth and that becomes, in a sense, the dominant source of honor in society. And so, anyway, that was thats something that i really focused on and elaborated in one of the chapters of the book. Now, i dont know if i can say much about campaign finances. What i will say is that adams actually points us towards a way of thinking about the power of wealth and perhaps as an alternative to some of the focus on the financing of elections and things like that. Because forked a for adams the power of wealth wasnt just the ability to purchase influence whether its through funding of elections or the funding of lobbyists or the purchasing of media in our contemporary situation, adams also thought that wealth was powerful because people admired the rich, people looked up to them, even called it sympathy for the rich. That there was something about wealth that made it a lot like beauty, actually. If wealth enabled a possessor to stand out in society, at one point he says, and he draws on the theories of adams myth here and gold glows were the brightest luster in the eyes of the world. It enables its possessor to stand out apart from the rest of society and to command the admiration of the public and that was a source of power and thats something that is gets us away from thinking about the imperial way that wealth buys influence through campaigns and i think thats all very important and adams was from a different direction. Host this is for either of you. What were adams views on slavery . Well, he did not write very much about slavery. He was somebody has argued that adams was in the 1770s to 1780s, he was not any kind of antislave pioneer in massachusetts that he had a rather slavery had existed, he did not think much about it, but it was really challenged by other people in massachusetts and massachusetts was the first place to essentially outlaw slavery. Based on an article he had written in the massachusetts constitution, thats one of the clauses of the declaration of rights in the constitution, then massachusetts judges took that and said this declaration of the people being free and equal means there cannot be any slavery in massachusetts and that did end slavery within a very few years. Adams had actually no quarrel with that. He disliked slavery. His family did not have slaves. Abigails family had one or two slaves and she also came to dislike it. They werent pioneers in this way at all. But i do find a very interesting angle on this. In late in life, adams kept talking about, got right into a man named john taylor of virginia. This man was a jeffersonion, a major slave holder, a virginia soldier and hated the banks and so on. Adams is writing to taylor about political questions and a lot about aristocracy and at one point he talks about the importance of education and he says, and he says, maybe being a little easy on taylor, and hes also indulging in the language used in virginia, he almost invariablies referred to taylors slaves as servants, and they would not use the word slave about their own slaves if they could possibly avoid it. They said that they were servants, sort of implying that the servants could walk, even though they couldnt. And he said that adams said he thought education was so important, he said i would recommend this even for all of your servants. Now, what hes really saying here is that all the slaves in virginia ought to be able to learn to read and write as well as everybody else in virginia and everyone everywhere else in america. So, i think his i think his not being forward and confronting slavery, is that he has hes so into thinking about, reading about the history of traditional societies in europe and most of which or many of which had slaves at some point. So, he doesnt see it as a problem, but then he turns in thinking as an american, thinking about the republic of america, weve got to have education for everybody, and this would undermine slavery quickly. I would just add to that, theres a letter, i think written around 1801, not sure where adams responds to friends who are much more antislavery than he was and it becomes apparent that adams was antislavery while also being sanguine about the slavery problem, in the sense that the idea that adams conveyed is that he thinks that slavery is more or less on its way out. So its not really an urgent problem that should be at the forefront of our concerns because the natural drift of events is taking care of it. He, i think he should be criticized for that because in his own lifetime in the previous ten years slavery had actually expanded substantially and he would turn out to be profoundly wrong in the subsequent decades, the structures of slavery would just grow deeper and deeper and the problem would grow more and more urgent and severe. His attitude, his saying this, by the way, was fairly common, particularly in virginia, optimistic slave holders saying this problem will go away. Even jefferson said that. Not so common in new england, it was somewhat less common to say this problem is naturally going to resolve itself. Host lets end by bringing adams to the present day. What advice do you think that adams would give the Current Administration how to drain the swamp in washington, if at all . Each of you give thoughts on that. Well, it was advice for the current president . Or administration or washington, you know. I think what i would i think i would be better put, to give advice to the voters. [laughter] though one thing that i recently discovered is that the in spite of the aspiration to drain the swamp, the new cabinet has a combined wealth thats greater than the combined gdp of the poorest 39 countries in the world. And one of the themes of adams writings when you look back at the history of republicans was the vulnerability of chief executives in relation to the oligarchs and this long history of the ways as richard described earlier, the ways that the aristocrats or the oligarchs would subvert the chief executive and would more or less capture it and turn it into an instrument. And it would seem, to the extent that adams is right about that tendency in the history of republicans, it would seem that when we make decisions about whom to elect as president , we ought to do so with that in mind. We ought to do so with the idea in mind that being president requires a kind of hyper vigilance about the danger that oligarchs can pose to executives, and the need for them to maintain their own integrity as an office holder, apart from the influences because adams might say theres a natural tendency for a swamp to surround the executive and it takes a great deal of vigilance to prevent that happening. Host dick, any final thoughts on what adams, kind of aristocracy could teach folks in washington today . Well, i think, i want to Say Something about draining the swamp. A president , a president has an enormous amount of power under the constitution and the president can drain the swamp or at least can begin to drain the swamp, but you have to the president has to want to drain the swamp, has to think its a good idea to drain the swamp. Theres been a lot of talk about this phrase and a lot of people have somehow bought into the idea that the current president wanted to drain the swamp. And actually, if one looks back at this, it seems to be a phrase that would kind of put on the president as a candidate and as lucas pointed out, there seems to have been no attention whatever to this in choosing the cabinet. The not every person appointed is necessarily an example of wealth aristocracy. Many are. Many represent other kinds of interests or whatever. But trump is not the first president who has said, i dont know who the first one was, but trump is not the first one who said that he thinks america is a wonderful place because people can become wealthy, not the first one to say he really likes people who have done a wonderful job making money, who have become wealthy, who have become successful businessmen, i think probably several president s have said this and my own view is that if you actually do believe that, youre not in any position to try to drain the swamp at all. Its just going to be stay right where it is, particularly with so many members of the Senate Already deeply immersed in this themselves. I think the American Public seems to have some notion that the swamp, the problem of the swamp is these bureaucrats, which they dont like, in the federal government. My personal opinion, thats not the problem. It isnt the problem with the bureaucrats who are often dedicated people who dont get paid very much to do hard work and then get insulted. The problem is the lobbyists, the interests, many of the representatives, many of the senators, and different some president s we have had in the 20th and 21st century. That is what keeping the swamp well filled up. If you want to drain the swamp, as voters, you need to think, you know, who is keeping it filled up. And who would help drain it . And that would tell you that it is a problem of aristocracy of wealth, aristocracy of birth. Many of the wealthy people involved in government today came from quite affluent families. They werent all abe lincoln or anything like that, you know, so or john d rockefeller, he started with nothing. They werent entirely that. Many of them are second, third, fourth generation millionaires, billionaires, whatever. If the voters are comfortable with that, then thats fine. If theyre not comfortable, they have to recognize where the problem really lies, i think. Host thank you so much for that. [applause] thank you, everyone, for being here. There will be a book signing outside afterwards so Luke Mayville, richard ryerson, thank you so much. Parents of the late Trayvon Martin remember their sons life and death. We wrap up with the dashd armitage who looks at civil wars throughout world history. That happens tonight on cspans booktv. First up, here is Erica Armstrong dunbar
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