Dare to Compete

Have you been as mesmerized by the HBO series on John Adams as I have? The visual banquet of historical details is reason enough to watch the life and times of our second president, his family, and the men who were alternately his friends and his foes among the founding fathers. It is tempting for me to want to put the spotlight on his wife Abigail whose plea that he should “remember the ladies” in writing the new nation’s laws fell on deaf ears despite her place as Adams’ top and most erudite advisor. But I find most striking the sense of history. Adams was almost obsessed with defining the legacy that he knew he as a leader of a new nation would be creating for the generations to come.

Today, we also live in times that will define us as a nation. Watching John Adams spar with his nemesis, the calculating and complex Renaissance man Thomas Jefferson, it struck me that while technology has changed a great deal, critical elements of political leadership have changed little if at all. Nor have the challenges of cobbling together an electoral majority in our cantankerously diverse country become any easier.

This video look at the courage it takes to compete in a presidential election was sent to me by a reader of Heartfeldt Politics, KD. She or he noted the importance of this historic moment, and I thought it worth sharing.

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