The Separation of Powers

Adams was one of the first and greatest proponents of a bicameral legislature. While Thomas Jefferson's Democratic-Republican party was pushing for a more Athenian style democracy in America with one house of directly elected representatives, Adams pushed back with demands that there be a senate with the more aristocratic members of society as well as a Supreme Court.

Adams knew the power of populism and emotion and looked at it as something that needed to be controlled rather than promoted. As one who was fit to rage and sending letters that he may have later regretted, he understood better than anyone the dangers of a pure democracy where the mob's raw emotion rules the day.

He studied the French Revolution and the writers who influenced it and saw not the triumph of the many over the few, but the inevitable path to despotism. He was right, as it turned out, that the masses when given pure democracy would be disorganized and would eventually look to an authority- Napoleon, to give them the law and order they no longer enjoyed.

He always felt that what the common man wanted and what was the fad of the day, would never be what's best for the long term health of the young country.

John Adams would not have been a fan of Joe the Plumber as the new face of the Republican Party.