A Bad Political Move That Ended the Political Career of a President, and Destroyed His Political Party

"Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."  George Santayana, from "The Life of Reason, 1905"  

It seems strange that, out of the 47 different Presidencies in the history of the United States, one of its founding fathers who served as President would be evaluated as one of the worst Presidents in history.  Someone who helped Thomas Jefferson draft the Declaration of Independence, who was known as one of its primary supporters, who served in the Continental Congress, and as a diplomat representing the United States in Europe during the latter years of the Revolutionary War, and who was the author of the Massachusetts constitution, which was a model for the United States Constitution, should have been a staunch patriot, a believer in American idealism and a successful early leader of his people.  

John Adams was a great man, a great patriot, and he did a lot for the United States of America, except serving as one of its more effective Presidents.  The one thing Adams failed at was serving as President.  He failed to discern, at a critical point of impending crisis, the necessity of maintaining the principles of the Constitution, specifically the limits it placed on government and the guarantees of individual liberties that it provided.  His actions prompted the passage of a set of four specific laws, three of which were open violations of most of the Bill of Rights, known as the Alien and Sedition Acts.  

These acts opened the door to the repression of civil liberties of free speech and freedom of the press, justified by nebulous threats to "national security" which Adams perceived as a result of a dispute with France, that included attempts by the French government to become involved in political subversion in order to push the Congress toward passing the kinds of laws and economic policies favorable to them.  So Adams signed these acts into law.  Maybe your recollection of this part of history is a little cloudy, so here's what these acts were designed to do: 

• The Naturalization Act increased the requirements that were placed on those individuals seeking to become citizens of the United States, especially those who were resident within the country but who were not citizens.  There were still a lot of resident foreigners in the United States following the Revolution who had come from places other than Great Britain.  
• The Alien Friends Act gave the President of the United States the power to imprison and deport foreigners without due process, simply because they were not American citizens.  
• The Alien Enemies Act gave the President power to detain foreigners during time of war, invasion or predatory incursion.  Though modified, this act remains on the books. 
• The Sedition Act criminalized criticism of the President or the Federal Government, especially statements determined to be false or malicious.  

The reaction of a majority of Americans was swift outrage.  Led by the articulate Thomas Jefferson, who was Vice-President under Adams, and founder of the new Democratic-Republican party, which found its base among the common people, everything Adams had done came under criticism.  He was accused of being too favorable to the British, and too hostile to our loyal ally, France, too thin skinned to accept criticism, and too aristocratic and out of touch with the common people.  He was not able to come to grips with the fact that civil liberties and the constitution can't be even temporarily suspended or repressed in the interest of "national security."  

The results were disastrous for both Adams and the Federalist Party which had supported him.  Adams lost the election of 1800 to Jefferson, and the Federalist Party came apart at the seams, never to be a political influence in the United States again.  

History is Repeating Itself 

Though the American people, through their legislators and ultimately through the courts, rejected all but one of the Alien and Sedition Acts, on Constitutional grounds, and have established that national security does not trump the Bill of Rights under any circumstances, we see the echoes of the same level of lack of discernment, fear of criticism and lack of comprehension of the limits of government in the Constitution when it comes to civil liberties of the people, coming out of the Trump White House.  The sitting President is putting himself in the same bad position as Adams, whose historical reputation of being one of the worst Presidents in history rests on his support for the Alien and Sedition Acts.  

What we have is a sitting President whining and complaining openly, doing everything he can to supress and shut down the free press, and free speech, desiring to jail, or execute, politicians who are critical of his incompetence, displaying his pathetic--and inexcuseable--ignorance of both American History and the United States Consitution.  He is, with his own words, indicting himself, and making a case for being compared to one of the worst Presidents in history, and for being evaluated as one of the worst.  

It is inexcusable, and should be intolerable, for any President of the United States not to have more than just a rudimentary, basic knowledge of American history, and of the working of the Constitution.  And yet, the evidence of this President's ignorance pours out of his Truth Social media site by the hour.  But what is even worse, is the fact that there are somewhere around 70 million Americans  who also demonstrate inexcusable ignorance about history, and about the limits placed on government by the Constitution.  

They voted for him.  

An Educated Electorate is an Informed Electorate

I believe it was Thomas Jefferson who once claimed that an educated electorate was the key to the preservation of Democracy.  So let's be honest.  I wonder how many of those reading this article actually remembered the Alien and Sedtion Acts from their own history classes?  We should, at leaat, that's a reasonable expectation.  The people essentially ended Adams' poltical career the consequence of that being the dissolution of the Federalist Party.  

Trump, with his gaslighting, and with his blatant, violence-advocating attacks on polticians he considers as personal enemies, has set the Democratic party up for major gains in Congress during the upcoming mid-term elections.  If the Democrats get a majority in the House, a one-seat majority in the senate puts an end to the Trump administration two years early.  But that only moves the needle back temporarily.  There's already a lot of damage that has to be fixed, and the level of misinformation and ignorance is so high, we have already seen so much anti-American, anti-Constitutional behavior from this President, can we even hope that the aftermath will be the dissolution of the reshaped MAGA Republican party? 

We've seen this President get away with dozens of acts displaying bigotry, hatred, ignorance, and incompetence, all of which would have brought anyone down if the electorate were not equally or more bigoted, hateful and ignorant than he is.  It's going to take a lot more than angry voters at one mid-term election to bring about the demise of the MAGA GOP and end its influence.  The free press must be rebuilt, the corporate media destroyed, and our educational system massively reformed in order to reset American politics in order to preserve our Democracy.  

And we must remember our history in order to avoid repeating it once again.