Henry Adams on the American presidency

In his early writings, Adams indicated that he had definite expectations of men who held public office, though those expectations were usually disappointed. The ideal statesman should have ability, integrity, knowledge, unselfishness, social fitness, experience and energy. In determining his criterion for this ideal, Adams turned to both the statesmen he knew as family or friends and to those of the past. His application of this criterion to a number of American Presidents was never done systematically or exhaustively, but rather incidentally as part of the author's iv depiction of events significant to his themes.

The chief method used in this study has been the com parison of Adams' early observations (in personal letters and journalist essays) on the men who became President and on the office itself with later comments--often on the same men or situations--as they appear in more polished form in Democracy, the History and The Education. This comparison reveals the growth of the mature writer's ironic and evocative style and the development of his use of certain important political figures as symbols.

In The Education of Henry Adams, both Adams' mature artistic method and his thematic use of political characters came to final fruition. There he concluded, on the basis of his own study of politics, that only men of exceptional character should become President because only such special men might be able to direct various forces at work in society toward some desirable goal. Presidents usually were not successful for a number of reasons. For one thing, such men were rarely produced in our democratic society, and for another members of a democratic electorate would not knowingly keep their true superiors in office for long. Not only would it be difficult for such men to gain power, but the very process of gaining and trying to keep power would lead to their corruption because of the human greed at play in the political party machines. Even if a superior man did gain political power without having to pay the price of his moral integrity, he would not hold that power long. Either the imbalance of powers between the Senate and the Executive or the forces of circumstances beyond his control would lead inevitably to his failure.

These suppositions about the effect of power on the individual and the ineffectiveness of the individual will in the face of chaotic forces led Adams to suggest that western society was headed toward a general disintegration from which it could only be saved by the development of some evolutionary leap in human thought. If such a change in traditional modes of thinking were possible, he further concluded, it would come through some other form of education than that provided him and the men of his generation by American politics.