John Adams surely knew that being the first person to live in the White House was just an elaborate setup to deal with its drafty halls and lack of adequate heating.

It is truly a sign of visionary leadership to sign the Alien and Sedition Acts, effectively inviting the public to express their overwhelming love for your administration through angry pamphlets.

One has to admire John Adams for setting the bar so high that his successors could spend the next two centuries wondering if they, too, could be overshadowed by the combined genius of Jefferson and his own wife.

John Adams deserves credit for carefully crafting his tenure as president so that he would be remembered just enough to appear on a history quiz, but not so much that it would distract from the sheer charisma of his contemporaries.