In search of Adams.

• Author: Bacevich, Andrew J.
• Position: Book review

Charles N. Edel, Nation Builder: John Quincy Adams and the Grand Strategy of the Republic (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 2014), 432 pp., $29.93.

Think of John Quincy Adams as the Elvis of American statecraft: creative genius, preeminent practitioner and enduring inspiration. Well, make that Elvis minus the charisma.

So Charles Edel argues in Nation Builder. Edel, who teaches at the U.S. Naval War College, believes that Adams personally devised the "comprehensive grand strategy" that guided the United States for decades and "set the nation on a course to long-term security, stability, and prosperity." The "detailed policy road map" that Adams developed sought "to harness the country's geographic, military, economic, and moral resources," with the ultimate aim of bringing "America to a position of preeminence in the world."

The problem here starts with misplaced paternity. To credit Adams with fathering U.S. grand strategy is the equivalent of saying that Elvis invented rock and roll. Doing so ignores all the other worthies, predecessors and contemporaries alike who lent a hand. The King was as much product as he was pioneer. Meanwhile, what may rank as Adams's most lasting contribution somehow escapes Edel's notice altogether.

Raised by John and Abigail Adams--who never doubted that their oldest son was meant for greatness--John Quincy Adams lived an exceedingly consequential life, virtually all of it spent in service to antebellum America. He knew everyone from Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson to Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln. As a diplomat, he was the Ryan Crocker of his day, serving every president from George Washington to James Madison with quiet distinction. Next came elevation to the post of secretary of state, followed by a term as president and, finally, seventeen years as a member of the House of Representatives. Appropriately, he died in harness, after suffering a stroke while on the House floor.

The time that Adams spent as the nation's chief diplomat under James Monroe marked the pinnacle of his illustrious career. Edel's account sustains the common assessment that Adams was not only the right candidate for that job, but also that he was appointed to fill it at precisely the right time. Man and moment aligned perfectly.

By comparison, the four years Adams lived in the White House surely represent his professional low point. The qualities that made him such a superb secretary of state--subtlety, prudence and constancy--did not easily translate into the hurly--burly world of electoral politics filled with backslapping wheeler-dealers. So one of our most effective secretaries of state became one of our least effective chief executives. Edel's description of Adams's presidency as an "abject failure" seems about right.

Yet even when he was at the top of his game, Adams was adapting a playbook that was largely the handiwork of others. Although he kept a diary that eventually ran to almost seventeen thousand pages, Adams never got around to expressing his strategic vision in so many words. He never penned a "Long Telegram." He never published an equivalent of George F...