<i>Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents That Forged the Republic</i>. By Lindsay M. Chervinsky.

Although “George Washington created the presidency,” Lindsay M. Chervinsky argues, his successor deserves a lot of credit, too (9). John Adams was far more representative of the mere mortals who filled the role thenceforth. His conduct would “mold the office for all the chief executives to follow” (2). Though historians often “treated his presidency as the low point” of his eventful career, Adams “proved the right man for the moment” (340, 2). Chervinsky's engaging narrative of Adams' administration (1797–1801) offers ample material to assess her claim.For all of his accomplishments, Adams entered office with no executive experience. During Adams' vice presidency, Washington “excluded [him] from every single cabinet meeting and shared little information . . . about state affairs” (21). Adams lacked not just Washington's unparalleled personal authority but also any practical understanding of how to run the executive branch. Retaining Washington's cabinet secretaries seemed prudent—even though Washington considered Timothy Pickering, Oliver Wolcott Jr., and James McHenry to be “poor advisors” and “incompetent” choices to lead the state, treasury, and war departments (48).With these often-hostile subordinates, Adams set out to address the nation's primary challenge of achieving a modus vivendi with the unstable French government. The French Directory had expelled Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, the U.S. diplomat in Paris, and announced their intention to capture American ships carrying goods for the British, their enemies. Over the bellicose objections of Pickering and Wolcott, Adams dispatched peace negotiators. But shortly after arriving in Paris, the diplomatic trio learned that Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, the French foreign minister, would open talks only if the United States agreed to loan France money (something the Americans’ instructions explicitly prohibited) and pay a personal bribe. Even though “[m]ost nations simply complied” with such practices, the Americans ultimately refused (103).News of the XYZ Affair, so named for the go-betweens whom Talleyrand used, set off a cascade of developments that dominated Adams’ presidency. The Federalist-controlled Congress authorized the creation of a provisional army on the dubious grounds of a much-feared French invasion. After convincing Washington to command the mostly hypothetical force, Adams unsuccessfully tried to prevent the old general from appointing Alexander Hamilton as his second in command. To pay for the army, Congress levied direct taxes, sparking Fries’ Rebellion in Pennsylvania. When Federalists passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, Vice President Thomas Jefferson and James Madison responded by drafting the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions. With the maritime Quasi-War ongoing, Adams opted to send a second peace commission to Paris, a move that angered Federalists still hoping for a real war against the nation's original ally. This second mission eventually produced a respectable treaty with France's First Consul, Napoleon Bonaparte. But it came too late to have any impact on Adams’ bid for reelection in 1800, when he lost to the Democratic-Republican ticket of Jefferson and Aaron Burr.The book elucidates the physical settings in which flesh-and-blood human beings interacted and shaped the course of events. Chervinsky's Adams walks home with Jefferson through the streets of Philadelphia after Washington's farewell dinner, eyes Hamilton in the audience as he delivers his annual message to Congress, and sleeps on “pitiful mattresses” next to wife Abigail in crowded taverns during his grueling route home (149). By sustaining this perspective in every chapter, Chervinsky evokes the tangible world in which Adams and his equally imperfect contemporaries struggled to define the new federal government's institutions and practices. But the narrative approach often causes the book's analytical framework to fade into the background. Indeed, there are long stretches where Adams disappears. Though an admirable synthesis of these years, a different organization would facilitate a more systematic examination of Adams' approach to forging a post-Washington executive branch.In addition, Adams' performance in office can support a more ambivalent overall verdict than the one Chervinsky advances. If Adams found his subordinates frustrating, he surely bears much of the blame for retaining them for so long and for failing to set a clear and confident tone. Adams truly did spend too much time at home in Massachusetts each year—an “inexplicable” seven straight months in 1799, for instance (203). Chervinsky recounts Adams' battles with the “Arch” Federalists, whose hyper-partisanship and ideological prejudices contrasted with Adams’ more pragmatic and pacific inclinations. Yet Adams still signed all the ill-considered bills the Federalist Congress put in front of him, decisions that reflected some of “his worst errors of judgment and failures of morality” (131). Even if one grants the 18th-century expectation that “Congress dominated the legislative agenda,” Adams often seems to lack agency (98).Some legacies could bear even more emphasis. In addition to overseeing the creation of the Department of the Navy, a measure he “had repeatedly recommended” (137), Adams facilitated the rise of John Marshall: first by appointing him to the initial mission to France, then by naming him Secretary of State, and finally by nominating him as Chief Justice. Adams's faith in Marshall reveals his instincts at their finest. The rich scholarship on Adams' thought might reveal why he found Marshall's political and legal philosophy so congenial. Adams' behavior during the election crisis of 1801 established salutary precedents that Americans long took for granted. Accepting defeat, he gave no encouragement to “Federalist schemes” to exploit the electoral vote tie between Jefferson and Burr and install a Federalist president (319).Contrary to popular belief, Adams cooperated as Jefferson prepared to take office, hosting his erstwhile friend for dinner twice. Jefferson's later complaints about Adams' appointment of “midnight judges,” Chervinsky maintains, were overwrought (317). True, Adams left Washington, DC, at 4 a.m. the day of Jefferson's inauguration, but it is not clear that anyone expected him to attend the festivities and, besides, he needed to catch the stage. Would it have killed him to book one for the next day, though? Chervinsky's account may not prove that Adams was the ideal successor to Washington in all respects. Yet she demonstrates, in vivid detail, that someone else in Adams' position might have done quite a bit worse.