OPINION: How will history judge us?

John Adams found himself on the wrong side of history in 1789 and paid a price for it. As vice president of the United States, Adams presided over a month-long debate on a question that is oddly jarring to our ears today: How should the president be addressed? Article II of the then newly ratified Constitution states that “the executive power shall be vested in a President,” but it does not say what, if any, title would be affixed to the office. Some, led by Adams, thought that “president” was too ordinary a term for such a lofty position, too easily equated with the presidents of banks and other mundane businesses. No, the president of the United States deserved better. The position should be accompanied by some prefix commensurate with the “dignity and splendor of the office,” perhaps “His Elective Highness” or “His Excellency.” A committee appointed by Adams came up with a wordy mouthful: “His Highness the President of the United States and Protector of Their Liberties.” Adams thought it acceptable but suggested “His Majesty” in place of “His Highness.”

The Senate’s proceedings stalled after a substantial number of senators balked at the idea of affixing elevated titles to the offices of the president and vice president. The Constitution specifically prohibited the granting of “titles of nobility,” they argued, because such appellations ran contrary to the founding principle of the American republic, which recognized no rank above that of “freemen.” Incensed, Adams rose from his seat to scold the opposing senators for their behavior. In what one senator described as a 40-minute “harangue,” Adams went on about the “immense advantage of titles” and otherwise “found fault with everything almost.” But Adams’s tantrum changed no minds. Besides, the House of Representatives had already made its decision, unanimously refusing to accept any elevated titles in references to the president. For his part, Thomas Jefferson, residing in Paris as the U.S. minister to France, contemptuously characterized the Senate committee’s recommendation as the “most superlatively ridiculous thing” he had ever read.

In the end, the divided Senate agreed with the House that the chief executive be known simply as “The President of the United States.” By that time, the point had become moot anyway because George Washington had expressed his preference for being addressed as “Mr. President” rather than “Your Eminence” or “Your Majesty” or any other variation reminiscent of royalty. What Washington understood, and what most Americans sensed in his presence, was that personal dignity and demeanor were far more consequential than lofty titles in garnering the respect of visiting princes and potentates. And in Washington, as one contemporary observed, “virtue was personified,” which alone was enough to convey the dignity of the republic.

Adams suffered for his vanity. At best, he looked foolish. Political adversaries made him the butt of their jokes, referring to the portly vice president as “His Rotundity” behind his back. At worst, Adams’s behavior deepened the suspicion that he harbored monarchical ambitions. In the aftermath, he felt compelled to remind his associates that he was unwavering in his devotion to the “principles of 1776” and pleading with them to remember that he remained an “irreconcilable enemy to monarchy.” But it was too little, too late. Washington dismissed the fuss over titles as silly and said that Adams’s role in the affair had made him “odious.” Washington subsequently distanced himself from his vice president.

How far have we descended from the original. Our current president thinks that the dignity of the nation requires him to be ferried around in a hand-me-down luxury jetliner “gifted” by a Qatari prince, that the dignity of the nation will be bolstered by a 90,000-square-foot ballroom resembling the grand ballroom that Audrey Hepburn graced in the movie “My Fair Lady,” and that the dignity of the nation is advanced by the gilded ornaments and doodads cluttering the Oval Office. All of this suggests that our priorities are woefully reversed. For Americans, as James Madison explained during the furor over titles, “the more simple” we are, the “more national dignity we shall acquire.” Adams did not understand this, and his reputation never recovered from the part he played in the titles controversy. Worrying about his legacy, he instructed his friends not to “misrepresent me to posterity.” But history has not judged John Adams kindly. How will it judge us?

Mel Yazawa is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of New Mexico and the author of Contested Conventions: The Struggle to Establish the Constitution and Save the Union, 1787-1789.