These were matters he thought could be negotiated. Franklin became a revolutionary not because he disputed the taxes levied by the British Parliament on the American Colonies nor, more generally, because his interpretation of John Locke or Francis Hutcheson drove him to deny the right of Parliament to legislate for the Colonies. Yet for all his flexibility, Franklin would find dismaying certain aspects of American life two centuries after his death. In contrast to most successful politicians before the 20th century, Franklin never mastered the art of wholesale oratory, but his quiet wit and confidential humor would have made him the best guest that Larry King ever had.

In an era that distrusted democracy, Franklin precociously placed his faith in the common people. Less zealous than Samuel Adams or Thomas Paine and more modest than Alexander Hamilton or James Madison, Franklin poked fun at himself in a style that has since become mandatory among public figures. More worldly than John Adams, whose Puritan sensibilities were offended by the behavior of the Parisians among whom Franklin moved with easy grace during his Revolutionary War diplomatic mission, he would have no difficulty with the diversity of lifestyles that marks our age in America. Unlike planters George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, Franklin was a city boy Boston-born, Philadelphia-adopted and London-polished, he would adapt readily to the urbanism of the 21st century. Of all the Founders, Benjamin Franklin is the easiest to imagine transposed to the present day.

Franklin isaacson