{"id":1191,"date":"2008-11-09T12:31:30","date_gmt":"2008-11-09T11:31:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=1191"},"modified":"2008-11-09T12:31:30","modified_gmt":"2008-11-09T11:31:30","slug":"americas-2nd-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=1191","title":{"rendered":"America&#8217;s 2nd president"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Most people around the world are familiar with America&#8217;s first president (George Washington) and third (Thomas Jefferson), but many have not heard of the second. He was <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/John_Adams\">John Adams<\/a> who served two terms as Washington&#8217;s Vice-President before himself becoming President for a single term (1797-1801). Later his son John Quincy Adams also became (the sixth) President (1825-1829).<br \/>\nI&#8217;ve just finished viewing a seven-part <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hbo.com\/films\/johnadams\/\">television series<\/a> made by HBO on the life of John Adams. It has rightly been a great success, winning no less than 13 Emmys. The lead role is taken by Paul Giamatti who gives an outstanding performance among many fine portrayals.<br \/>\nAdams&#8217; death &#8211; shown in the final programme &#8211; was as remarkable as his life. On 4 July 1826, the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, he died at his home in Quincy. Thomas Jefferson, his compatriot in their quest for independence, had died a few hours earlier on the very same day.<br \/>\nIronically the whole series was brilliantly directed by a Briton: Tom Hooper [see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/media\/2008\/sep\/29\/john.adams.emmy.award.television\">his article<\/a>]. He is the son of Richard Hooper whom I know mainly through his work as former Deputy Chairman of Ofcom.<br \/>\nWhat is striking about this life of one of America&#8217;s &#8216;Founding Fathers&#8217; is how resonant many of the themes are: the balance between the role of the federal government and the states, the extent to which the people can be trusted to guide politicians, the need to balance individual freedoms against the security needs of the nation, and the risk of entering an overseas war. Terrific stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Most people around the world are familiar with America&#8217;s first president (George Washington) and third (Thomas Jefferson), but many have not heard of the second. He was John Adams who served two terms as Washington&#8217;s Vice-President before himself becoming President for a single term (1797-1801). Later his son John Quincy Adams also became (the sixth) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1191\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}