John Adams Put Principles Above Politics. That Did Not Make Him Popular

John Adams, as portrayed in the David McCullough biography and seven-part HBO miniseries, was often a blunt-spoken man who placed principle above political expediency. His loyalty was to “a government of laws and not of men,” to facts not the wishful thinking of a partisan mob.

“Facts are stubborn things,” Adams said in 1774 after witnessing a mob of reb…