FACES AND PLACES: Red, white, blue and orange (10/16/05)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

Red, white, blue and orange

The breach that separates Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko, two leading lights of Ukraine's Orange Revolution, is reminiscent of a similar division between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, principal architects of America's Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776.

Once close personal, even intimate friends, Adams and Jefferson became bitter enemies and political adversaries during the raucous election of 1800, described by one historian as "arguably the most important election in America's history."

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson could not have been more unlike in character and temperament.

Adams was frugal, vain, relatively poor and deeply religious. Born in Massachusetts Bay Colony, he was once a teacher and later a Harvard-educated lawyer. During the Revolutionary War he was a diplomat in France and Holland, and helped negotiate the peace settlement with Great Britain. After serving as minister to the Court of St. James, he returned to America to be elected vice-president under President George Washington. Unlike Jefferson, he considered the bloody French Revolution an abomination.

Jefferson was a multi-talented intellectual, a bon-vivant, a Francophile, a spendthrift (always living beyond his means), wealthy (he owned a plantation with hundreds of slaves), and a Diest who admired Jesus Christ but did not believe in his divinity. Born in Virginia, he studied law at William and Mary College. In 1785 he succeeded Benjamin Franklin as minister to France. He served in President Washington's Cabinet as secretary of state.

Political tensions between Adams and Jefferson began to emerge during the first Washington administration, becoming pronounced during the second. Gradually, Adams became associated with the Federalists, who advocated a strong central government. Jefferson leaned towards the so-called Democrat-Republican position favoring states' rights. A reluctant candidate for president against Adams in 1796, Jefferson became Adams's vice-president when a flaw in the Constitution permitted an opponent with enough votes to serve as the victor's vice-president. The arrangement was doomed from the start.

In 1800 Jefferson ran against Adams during an incredibly brutal campaign. "Jefferson was subjected to ceaseless obloquy," writes historian John Freling in "Adams and Jefferson: The Tumultous Election of 1800. "

"As a young attorney he was said to have gulled his clients. His wartime conduct after 1776 had been deplorable. While others sacrificed, he had lived comfortably, 'secure in his retreat ... from the fangs of blood-thirsty foe,' " Prof. Freiling notes: The Federalists accused candidate Jefferson and his supporters of supporting the excesses of the French Revolution, embracing "the cant of jacobinical illiberality" and "a creed of atheism and revolution."

"One Federalist newspaper," writes Prof. Freling, "advised its readers to vote for 'God - and a Religious President or impiously declare for Jefferson - and no God.' "

Adams also was subject to slander and calumny, writes David McCullough in "John Adams." He was accused of being "a hideous hermaphroditical character which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman," a "repulsive pedant" and a miscreant bent on creating an American monarchy.

"In the early 19th century," writes Bernard A. Weisberger in "America Afire: Jefferson, Adams and the Revolutionary Election of 1800," "one British traveler would write a familiar-sounding complaint that 'defamation exists all over the world, but it is incredible to what extent this vice is carried in America.' "

The election of 1800 produced "striking ironies," according to Mr. McCullough. "Jefferson, the Virginia artistocrat and slave master who lived in a style fit for a prince, as removed from his fellow citizens and their lives as it was possible to be, was hailed as the apostle of liberty, the 'Man of the People.' Adams, the farmer's son who despised slavery and practiced the kind of personal economy and plain living commonly upheld as the American way, was scorned as an aristocrat who, if he could, would enslave the common people."

The differences that existed between Federalists and Democrat-Republicans regarding states' rights was not resolved until the Civil War, a struggle that resulted in more dead and wounded than any other American conflict.

Returning to the Yushchenko/ Tymoshenko imbroglio, is it too much of a stretch to suggest that the flashy, effervescent Yulia, a woman who wheeled and dealed her way to riches during the past 15 years, and who now postures as a populist concerned with the welfare of "the masses," enjoys a kind of Jeffersonian persona?

Can Viktor be compared to Adams? Like Mr. Yushchenko, Adams was a plodding, careful leader with impeccable integrity. Adams did not die rich. Mr. Yushchenko probably won't either. Given the turmoil that characterized America's early years, especially among the founding fathers, should we be surprised by the tumult in Ukraine's political arena today? Like the early years of the American revolution, Ukraine is experiencing uncertainly, a clash of personal ambitions and a covetous neighbor ruled by an autocrat. Remember that the United States had to fight Great Britain twice to stabilize its independence.

Similarities between the two Americans and the two Ukrainians can only go so far. Presidents Adams and Jefferson were heirs of a British civic tradition that began with the Magna Carta of 1215. Ukraine has no such heritage. Adams and Jefferson were intellectuals, widely read children of the English Enlightenment. For better or for worse, Yulia and Viktor are children of the Soviet system. The ideals of John Locke, championing such human rights such as life, liberty and property, never took root in Ukraine. The only "rights" Ukrainians had under the Soviets was death, slavery and the gulag.

So, dear reader, fasten your seat belt! The coming year in Ukraine promises to be as volatile as anything Americans experienced over here.

In closing, it is of interest to note that thanks to Abigail Adams, America's two revolutionary icons did reconcile, enjoying a long correspondence in their twilight years. Both died on the same day, July 4, 1826, exactly 50 years after the Declaration of Independence. Amazing!

Myron Kuropas's e-mail address is [email protected].

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