President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s run for Congress is being favourably compared by her supporters to that of United States President John Quincy Adams.

The allusion, it turns out, is not entirely correct. It could also prove unfortunate and make her critics quite happy.

Adams, according to our 1968 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica printed in the US, finished his term as president in 1829. It was only a year later that he ran for Congress and won, and not while sitting in the Oval Office.

“When it was suggested to him that his acceptance of this position would degrade an ex-president, Adams replied that no person could be degraded by serving the people as a representative in Congress.”

A desire for vindication may have been behind Adam’s decision to run for Congress.  Like Arroyo, his presidential electoral victory came under a cloud early on and marred his entire term. He was accused of  vote-buying and corruption after he appointed as Secretary of State the person who had cast the winning vote for him in the electoral college – the body that ultimately determines who should be president.

Arroyo, too,was accused of allegedly rigging her votes in the 2004 race.

Adams served in Congress for 17 years but all the while “he had not abandoned his hopes for a re-election to the presidency,” the Britannica said.

On February 21, 1848, while delivering a vituperative speech inside the session hall,  “he suffered a cerebral stroke,  fell unconscious to the floor of the house and died two days later in the capitol building.”

Britannica’s description of Adams reminds me very much of Arroyo:  “He had few intimate friends, and not many men in American history have been regarded, during the period of our lifetime, with so much hosility and attacked with so much rancour by their political opponents.”