As Reagan said, most anything is doable if you don't care who gets credit for it. But not getting the credit leaves you with less stature and clout to make things happen in the future. Adams did things for this country that we should all be grateful for everyday. He may have been tortured by not getting the credit, but he was such a big man, that he knowingly put himself through that torture in order that this country would be born and thrive. He was the second President of a newly formed nation, with horrible financial problems, no great sense of oneness, issues of great division and to boot he was standing in the just vacated shoes of one of the greatest Americans, if not The Greatest American to ever draw breath. He held it together. That alone was a major accomplishment. And he had the burden of not being generally recognized as a great man like Washington and Jefferson. His early sacrifices cost him later during his presidency, but we are all for the better that he made them.
I’m not trying to suggest he deserves no credit at all, though it’s really hard to overlook the Alien and Sedition Act. Rather, I prefer the John Adams that served as the “cooler head” to his cousin Samuel and other ambitious revolutionary lawyers like James Otis during the Stamp Act Crisis and the early days of the Revolution. Once John Adams began playing the sort of politics we might recognize in today’s modern form, he lost his way a bit.