The media hardly took notice of that gaffe from a supposed constitutional law lecturer. But this non-gaffe is making headlines; John Quincy Adams a Founding Father? Michele Bachmann Says Yes. This from george Stephanopolis:
So which is the more egregious? My guess is that far more Americans would get the Adams question wrong than the age of the US Constitution. More from Outside the Beltway, American Power and National Review. From Mark Levin on facebook: George Stephanopolous: Flake
George Stephanopolous has revealed his own flakiness and ignorance in his effort to pile on Michele Bachmann. No, John Quincy Adams was not a founding father. He was John Adams' son. So, if she makes another 1,000 misstatements, only then will she come close to the King of Misstatements, Barack Obama, or is it Joe Biden?UPDATE: From Doug Ross: Hey, Chris Wallace: do you know how many people called Michele Bachmann a 'flake' before you slandered her on Sunday? None, dimwit.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2011/06/john-quincy-adams-a-founding-father-michele-bachmann-says-yes.html
But let me focus on the issue of slavery, which Stephanopolous jumps on. The fact is that a number of prominent Founders did attempt to end or at least take on the issue of slavery, including Virginia's George Mason, who was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. The inability to end slavery was among the reasons he refused to support the Constitution. While he was a slave-owner, he nonetheless opposed the institution going forward. Mason was no light-weight, either. He had authored the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which later served as the basis for James Madison's draft of the Bill of Rights.
The Constitution itself reflects some of the hard-fought compromises over slavery, resulting from the demands of anti-slavery delegates, including ending the importation of slaves on a date certain and diminishing the influence of the southern slave states in the federal House of Representatives with the three-fifth's limit respecting apportionment.
Historian Bernard Bailyn has made the important point that the Founders unleashed a process that would eventually destroy the institution of slavery by "condemning [it], confining it, and setting in motion the forces that would ultimately destroy it."