2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: How to beat Jeb Bush in a general election? [View all]merrily
(45,251 posts)And, the situation in John Adams time was very, very different. To name just three things: (1) the educated population was almost infinitely smaller in John Adams day than it was in 2000, and only about 6% of the 1789 population could even vote, so the pool of potential candidates was almost unimaginably smaller than it is today; and (2) public service was a huge sacrifice. You had to ride back and forth from the capitol on horseback, leaving your wife and kids to fend for themselves on the farm, no 1700 people working at the white house every day, no photo ops, no Air Force One, etc.
So, you could almost take the Adams men out of the equation as a very very different situation from modern Presidents.
Robert Kennedy was going to try to follow JFK into the White House. Teddy, too. But neither happened.