George Washington

Happy George Washington's Birthday!

With the amorphous "President's Day," sometimes it's good to remember individual Presidents who were great, ones who defined and sculpted the path of the US.  Washington was certainly one of those.

C-Span, I believe, came out with a recent ranking of Presidents.  That Abraham Lincoln and George Washington were rated numbers one and two gives the ranking some credibility.  I like a number of other places (Eisenhower and Truman, for instance), too; they are often underappreciated and underrated Presidents.  Some, though, lead me to question the legitimacy of the rankings.  Lyndon Johnson at # 10 and, esp, Barack Obama at # 12 seem way off-base and inaccurate to me, reflecting, perhaps, the bias of those involved.  But back to Washington.

His birthday, the 22nd of February, is an interesting story.  He was actually born on the 11th, in 1732. (BTW, how do you remember the square roots of 3 and 2 respectively?  They are easy.  The square root of 3 is 1.732, the year Washington was born.  The square root of 2 is 1.414, the year Columbus wasn't born.)  Britain at the time hadn't yet adopted the Gregorian calendar, which sought to correct the discrepancies of the old Julian calendar, namely how dates were straying from the seasons.  For instance, to keep up with the seasons, the Gregorian calendar added 10 days to the year in 1582.  That is, January 1st was followed by January 11th.  (It wasn't quite that simple, but you get the idea.)  Since the Gregorian calendar was a Catholic calendar (Pope Gregory XIII), not all countries adopted it.  (Some Orthodox European nations such as Russia/Soviet Union and Greece,didn't until the 20th Century.)  Because, in part, of the Protestant Reformation, Britain didn't come around until 1750 (the colonies, I believe, in 1752), adding 11 days then to conform.  Hence, Washington opted to celebrate his birthday on the 22nd to match up with the calendar change.  (I hope that makes a little sense.)

BTW, he didn't have wooden false teeth.  Oh, he had several sets of false choppers, made of ivory and animal (cow and sheep) teeth and even his own older teeth which had fallen out or been extracted.  And the springs that held some of them together seem as if they belonged in a torture chamber.  (Maybe that's why none of his portraits show him smiling?)  But there were no wooden teeth.  And I hate to shatter illusions, but he didn't chop down the cherry tree.  (I often feel like spilling the beans about Santa and the Easter Bunny when I reveal these.)

Of course Washington was a great President.  Almost by sheer dint of his personality, his reputation, he forged the new government of the US under the Constitution.  I don't think we, today, realize the opposition, the skepticism many Americans had in 1789.  The Constitution was not a universally accepted, let alone revered document.  Far from it.  It was almost, despite the questioning, "Things will be all right.  General Washington is on board."  It was expected, assumed that the first President would be George Washington.

It was more than him setting precedents--the first Cabinet appointments, vetoes, executive orders and agreements, dealing with Congress, setting policies both domestic and foreign.  There were a number of potential fatal events that he had to defuse:  the Whiskey Rebellion, Jay's Treaty, and many more.  Failure of the Republic was a real possibility, both from within and without.  Without George Washington what is today the US would look a lot different, if there even was a US.

Two things, I think, tell us much of what we need to know about the man.  When in London at the end of the war, portrait artist Benjamin West was asked by King George III "What will your General Washington" do now, having won the war for independence, with the victorious army at his beck and call?  The assumption, by the king at least, was that the same path as history had always taken would follow:  Caesar and others in the past, Napoleon in the near future; a victorious general would take the reins of power, as king, dictator, emperor.  West replied that he assumed Washington would return to Mt. Vernon, to his love of his farm/plantation and farming.  George III, perhaps not believing that, said, "If he does that he will be the greatest man in the world."  (I've also read/heard "...the greatest man since Jesus.")  And that's just what Washington did.

Remember, too, he could well have run for a third term and been easily elected, but he didn't,  He, once again, voluntarily, gave up power to return to his farm, like the Roman Cincinnatus.  He established the precedent of two terms for Presidents, which was honored by all subsequent Presidents until the egocentric, power-hungry Franklin Roosevelt.

Joseph Ellis (who apparently wasn't asked to rank the Presidents in this poll; nor was David McCullough) wrote, "Benjamin Franklin was wiser than Washington; Alexander Hamilton was more brilliant; John Adams was better read; Thomas Jefferson was more intellectually sophisticated; James Madison was more politically astute.  Yet each and all of these prominent figures acknowledged that Washington was their unquestioned superior...the Foundingest Father of them all."