Why we need leaders

People were dying and people were starving. Countries and outposts were posturing and punishing each other. Times were desperate. It was almost unanimous, it just needed to be sold. Things were close to being united, but they were not united. Adams took the reigns, cemented the cause, and delegated well.

HBO delivered the goods on the new, long awaited miniseries John Adams, the Massachusetts lawyer who coalesced the colonial want for independence. It’s from the Pulitzer Prize winning book (biography) of the same name by David McCullough. McCullough said that he was amazed of the fact that Adams and Thomas Jefferson died the same day – July 4, 1826 – exactly 50 years after signing the Declaration of Independence.

And there is Abigail Adams, a strong woman who was integral to her husband’s success; she was the epitome of the saying, “Behind every good man is a good woman.” As McCullough said in the behind-the-scenes, “Whenever she is present in his life, he did quite well. He has his troubles when she’s not around.” As my wife was heading off to bed, she commented on the great show and she said, “Why don’t you write about that?” I was planning on writing a different column titled “Life in Beta” which ties in later. So I declined and sat down to write. But all I could think about was John Adams. She was right. It pays to listen to your wife.

Astounding Fathers

The miniseries starts out great. Laura Linney and Paul Giamatti were spectacular. The popular cousin Sam Adams, the unflappable George Washington, the quiet and confident Thomas Jefferson, and the superbly jocular Benjamin Franklin were all remarkable acting jobs.

Surprising moments, as producer Tom Hanks was hoping for, come early with Adams defending the British soldiers in the Boston Massacre. Really? That happened? Yeah, it’s true; he was known to some as a British sympathizer.

The most outstanding moments were, in my opinion, twofold: the uncomfortable and gut-wrenching moment after passing a vote of independence and the moment when Adams and Washington come to agreement of the fact that neither of them knew what they were doing.

The first moment was a powerful silence, the silence of crossing uncharted waters. These men did stick their neck out. They did risk it all. They were, for the most part, a house of cards with no real chance of beating back and empire. But they made it work.

They made it work because, like all successful people, they were willing to step outside of their comfort zone and achieve. They weren’t afraid of making a mistake and they entered into positions that they created, that had never been filled before. This is what I what going to write about, what I was going to call, “Living in Beta.” I’ll describe it in more detail next week, but it’s the idea of putting yourself out there to make mistakes. And also, as Franklin puts it in the series, not making up your mind until you need to make up your mind. Or not even then. It’s about not getting attached to an idea. It’s about changing on the fly. But enough about that until next week.

Franklin summed up the "Living in Beta" idea perfectly when he said that he wasn't on anybody's side, that he was just coming along to find out what side he is on. Exactly.

Triumphant and tragic

McCullough said of Adams, “He didn’t know how not to speak his mind.” And the price he pays for this is just now, as we leave behind the first days of the U.S., rearing it’s ugly head. The miniseries will, no doubt, show us his full array of successes and failures, the most outstanding failure being the Alien Seditions Act, as Paul Levinson’s Infinite Regress blog points out. He goes on to say:

In the meantime, what I saw is superb, breathtakingly accurate history. David McCullough, author of the book upon which the mini-series is based, is a top-notch historian and a riveting writer. Tonight's two episodes captured perfectly the unique blend of radical and authoritarian that made John Adams what he was - a great Founding Father, and (in my opinion) a poor President. He is a passionate believer in American independence and the primacy of our laws over England's - so much so that he defends British soldiers wrongly accused in the Boston Massacre. He is powerful and convincing to some of our more cautionary Founding Fathers. He is an early appreciator of Washington as a military man, has a great alliance with Ben Franklin, and encourages Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence.

The correspondence between Adams and his wife has left behind a slew of telling letters. He and she discussed matters of state, matters of slavery, and matters of the disease-ridden home front. The letters are detailed and significant in piecing together the life of this indispensable Founding Father.

The gritty and the grimey

There were a few scenes depicting the just some of the unbearable brutalities of the day. One surprisingly savage scene was the tar and feathering. I always had a picture in my mind of what being tarred and feathered would look like. In my mind, they would trick a man to walk through a door and dump some room-temperatured tar on him and hit him with some feathers and everyone would laugh. Not so. It was “barbaric,” as Adams called it.

It would be wonderful if they release an annotated version of this on DVD. It would be like the Pop-Up Video version with insightful facts and small facts filling in the gaps in action. It would help to know who everyone is. There are too many players to keep them all straight (just as Lost replays their last episode, with extra information popping-up, before the next episode).

But this is just nitpicking. All in all, the show was dramatic, well-told, and sometimes humorous. The only complaint that I have could not have been avoided: it wasn’t as in-depth as I would have liked. It was, at times, sweeping over things, over times too quickly. But there is much ground to cover, especially with Adams living until he was 91 years old.

I’m a sucker for the quixotic, heroic tales from the birth of our nation. But his particular tale is gritty and realistic. And that’s what makes it great: realism and idealism in perfect harmony.

Editor's Note: Our March Madness Guru Jim Jamison went a perfect 65 for 65 in his tournament selection picks! Stay tuned, he's on a roll.

And Happy St. Patrick's Day!