John Adams: Figures of the 18th century are always a bit dicey to translate into an entirely different world. But no American Founder is easier to imagine in today’s politics: John Adams would be John McCain. Like McCain, Adams was squat, verbose, witty, sarcastic, combative, and more persistent than diplomatic. (“Sit down, John!” could have been written about either of them.) Adams and McCain were both figures of the center-right who loved their country deeply but feuded incessantly with the major figures in their own parties. Adams destroyed his party by the end of a single term in the White House; it is possible that McCain, if he’d been elected in 2008, might have done the same. Both men were driven by intense patriotism, a strong sense of personal honor, and an occasional attraction to quixotic causes; both were also vain, self-righteous, and prone to being guided by their many personal grudges. Both men were devoted advocates of naval power, but too easily tempted to use federal legislation against political speech.

To be sure, Adams and McCain had their differences. Adams was every inch the lawyer, and deep enough philosophically that Russell Kirk identified him as America’s first consequential conservative thinker. McCain was a warrior by temperament and training, a combat pilot who was always a quick thinker but never a deep one. Their views on immigration were quite different, as well — but then again, if McCain had been president in an era when his political and media critics were inspired by foreign ideas, it is hard to be sure that he would not have signed the Alien and Sedition Acts. In any event, if you dropped John Adams into the Senate of the 21st century, his politics, accomplishments, enemies, and media coverage would look very much like those of John McCain.