Opening paragraphs...........

     "The education of John Adams was effectively complete by the time he reached the presidency, but his conduct during his four-year term served to exhibit the dominant features of the Adams personality in all their full-blown splendor.  It was quite likely, in short, that he would succeed in the area of policy but fail politically.  Which is to say that he could do  what was right for the country, but arrange events so that his personal fate suffered as a consequence.  This was the established Adams pattern: to sense where history was headed, make decisions that positioned America to be carried forward by those currents, but to do so in a way that assured his own alienation from success."

-Joseph J. Ellis
Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams