He is the only prominent member of the true "Founding Fathers" to never adorn any form of U.S. currency. Washington, Jefferson, Franklin - even Alexander Hamilton (never serving in any capacity above Secretary of Treasurer under Washington) - have been so honored among the Founders. There are no monuments in Washington, D.C. as there are for the first President (Washington), the third President (Jefferson) and the sixteenth President (Lincoln). His life and immense contributions to the Independence of the U.S. colonies from Great Britain are summarily passed over by the history books of our schools.

Yet, when one examines the contributions of John Adams of Massachusetts, we cannot find anyone (including Washington, himself) who was more instrumental in our scraggly baker’s dozen of colonies "defeating" (hardly what actually happened; more like "wore down to disinterest") the greatest military power of the late 18^th century and achieving independence. It is as if John Adams is seen by the history of the age as merely a prickly curmudgeon that railed against all of the age (and made enemies of most) while the real "leaders" of the time did the hard work of forming a functional government.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. And, I had hoped, the current HBO series on his life would bring a modicum of respect for the Rodney Dangerfield of Revolutionary politics. After all, the series was (supposedly) based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography "John Adams" by David McCullough. Alas, I have been disappointed on that count. HBO has fallen into a fatal hodgepodge of "dramatic license" and poor casting and thoroughly dismissed the essence of the man and his undoubtable genius.

Paul Giamatti, who has done some decent turns in character roles particularly as Jim Braddock’s (Russell Crowe’s) trainer in "Cinderella Man", is not effective nor believable as the brilliant but irascible Adams. Laura Linney is tolerable (if a bit too emotional) as Adams’ lifelong wife, philosophical partner and advisor, Abigail Adams. Sadly, David Morse - who would have been otherwise perfect for the role of George Washington - is the distracting victim of a horrible make-up job and looks more the part of "Elephant Man" than the leader of our Continental Army and our first President. One is compelled to give the production high marks for costume design and props but, on actually telling the complex and multifaceted life of our second President, it falls flat. But, that is just my opinion.

Again, im my opinion, John Adams was the most essential and irreplaceable of all the Founding Fathers. Without his unwavering dedication to American independence, I am thoroughly convinced "The Cause" would have been stillborn. He, virtually single-handedly, pushed the Second Continental Congress to approve of the Declaration of Independence. He goaded, prodded and bludgeoned the Pennsylvania Quakers (led by John Dickinson), the South Carolina dandies (personified by John Rutledge) and the New York mercantile interests (all loyal to the British Crown) into - if not supporting - at least not obstructing the "unanimous" passage of Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. He was the floor leader of the radical faction (mostly the New England and, belatedly, the Virginia contingents) who were, ultimately, successful in formally breaking from the British Commonwealth. As Jefferson, himself, conceded: "Adams was the ablest advocate and champion of independence on the floor of the house. He was the Colossus of that Congress. He came out with a power which moved his hearers from their seats." These are the large truths that small history neglects.

Once Independence was declared, Adams was dispatched to France - along with Franklin - to convince Louis XVI that joining militarily and financially with the new "United States" would be a justifiable path to avenge the French losses from the Seven Years War. While Franklin, rightfully, gets most of the credit for swaying French opinion, Adams was the "Bad Cop" to Franklin’s "Good Cop." One may justifiably wonder if the French ultimately acceded as much to shut Adams up as to honor Franklin’s diplomatic aplomb. In any case, once France did join the fray, Adams went to Holland and, despite suffering illness almost to exhaustion, he managed to convince the Dutch financiers that the United States were an acceptable financial risk and secured a loan of $2 million for war expense. Then, he went to Paris to negotiate the treaty that ended the War for Independence. He was then dispatched to London as the United States’ first Ambassador to the Court of Saint James and King George III. This was an assignment, clearly, that no one wanted, all fully aware that the British court would heap scorn and rebukes upon anyone who dared represent the "rebel colonies." John Adams, always with his country’s welfare foremost in his mind, accepted.

After suffering through a thousand embarrassments visited upon him at the court of King George III, he - at Abigail’s behest - requested he be relieved from his assignment (sentence?) to return to private life at his beloved farm in Braintree, Massachusetts. He was, in short order, elected Vice-President under Washington and diligently served in what he called "the most insignificant office ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived." But, as always, he did the job laid before him.

Despite the machinations of Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr and Jefferson, himself, Adams was elected our nation’s second President in 1798. His Presidency was doomed from the outset; after all, one must admit that George Washington was a hard act to follow. [Already fully aware of the answer to the inquiry, Washington is said to have remarked to Adams: "I am rightly out and you are rightly in. Let us see who will be the happiest." Washington went on to Mount Rushmore; Adams went on to historical obscurity.] His refusal to go to war over the French incursions on our national honor (the "XYZ Affair" and the subsequent "Quasi-War") and the related and ill-designed "Alien and Sedition Acts" made Adams’ already disliked Presidency intolerable. In those years of growing Republican sentiments - stirred to a boil by his own Vice-President, Thomas Jefferson - Adams was reviled by most of the American populace. And, after quite probably the most brutal campaign in Presidential history, Adams narrowly lost his bid for reelection. In 1802, Jefferson was elected the third President of the United States.

When one looks back at the life and accomplishments of John Adams, you cannot help but form the impression that he has been much abused by the historians who, typically, prefer to extol the more "glamorous" historical figures at the expense of the more principled. Washington was our lion, Jefferson was our peacock and Franklin was our venerable grandfather. Adams was our pit bull, our first Harry Truman - he of "the buck stops here" mentality. He was a man who tolerated no fools and spoke only what he believed. He was a devout Christian in a time when most of the nascent American aristocracy (Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, et al) were "deists." In fact, Adams railed against the growing strength of the deistic movement as personified by Thomas Paine and others of the age: "The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity and humanity, let the Blackguard Paine say what he will."

He drew strength - not from the good opinions of others but from what he believed in his heart to be right. In that, he was a pariah in politics where compromise and back alley deals were a fact of life, even in the earliest political times of America. He was opinionated and fiery - a combination that was unfit for European diplomacy and, even more so, for the pseudo-aristocratic fraternity of the Founding Fathers. He hated the devious Hamilton - who he called "the bastard offspring of a Scottish peddler" - despised the duplicity of Jefferson and had the audacity to refer the George Washington as "old muttonhead." This was the brutal - but refreshing - honesty of John Adams of Massachusetts.

In a time when men were - according to Washington, himself - driven principally by self-interest, Adams was a man of learning who was driven, solely, by principle. As the contemporary man (McCullough) who knows him best remarked: "John Adams was the most widely and deeply read American of his day...[he was] one of the most important Americans in our history, a man who was never wealthy, who believed in education, who was himself transformed by education, and who never lost his love of learning."

He was an anachronism. He reminds us that leadership comes in many guises and is not always best served by compromising men. Sometimes - at least rarely - leadership requires backbone and inflexibility. Ideals should not be negotiable. At least, for John Adams, the forgotten Founding Father, that was a self-evident truth.