The big change since our first president.
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Leader of a Nation, Not a Party
February 22, 2004
By RON CHERNOW
As the Democratic primaries reach a critical stage,
partisan spirit is running high, and the presidential
campaign is already verging on blood sport. George
Washington's birthday today serves as a reminder of how
presidents can transcend politics and embody the national
spirit.
>From the time he was recruited as commander in chief in
1775, Washington personified the often tenuous hope of
unity among the 13 fractious colonies. With most of the
early patriot blood spilled in Massachusetts, the second
Continental Congress wanted a Southern general who could
lend a national imprint to the struggle. Washington shed
his Virginia identity and forged a Continental Army that
tutored its green recruits into thinking of themselves as
Americans.
It is impossible to assess Washington's career without
stumbling over the words "unity" and "unanimity" at every
turn. He was unanimously chosen as president of the
Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, where he
presided with customary tact. Since it was assumed that
Washington would be the first president, his taciturn but
resolute presence reconciled many skittish delegates to the
vast powers invested in the executive branch. Twice in a
row, in 1789 and 1792, the Electoral College elected him
president by a unanimous vote, confirming his status as a
political deity who seemed to hover above the petty feuds
of lesser mortals.
Nevertheless, Americans today tend to take George
Washington for granted. He seems less soulful than Lincoln,
less robust than Theodore Roosevelt, less charismatic than
Franklin Roosevelt. His bloodless image as a remote, Mount
Rushmore of a man - partly a byproduct of the craggy face
recreated endlessly by Gilbert Stuart - has worked to
obscure the magnitude of his achievement. Too often
Washington seems a dull, phlegmatic figure, wooden if
worthy, whose self-command stemmed from an essential lack
of inner fire.
In fact, Washington was a strong-willed, hot-blooded
personality. "I wish I could say that he governs his
temper," a rich Virginian told Washington's mother when
George was 16 years old. "He is subject to attacks of anger
and provocation, sometimes without just cause." The young
man mastered his wayward emotions by reading history,
studying deportment, and learning how to dance and dress
smartly. Like other founders, Washington was an ambitious,
insecure provincial, committed to a strenuous regimen of
self-improvement.
Over time, Washington would retreat behind an iron mask of
self-control. Alexander Hamilton, his chief aide for four
years during the Revolution, glimpsed the well-concealed
inner man and found him unbearably moody and irritable. As
with many passionate but guarded personalities, Washington
sometimes burst out unexpectedly in anger.
By early 1781, despite immense respect for the general,
Hamilton could no longer tolerate his short temper and
abrupt manner. He exploited a brief clash to resign his
staff position, then grumbled to a fellow aide of
Washington, "He shall, for once at least, repent his ill
humor." Hamilton's adversary, Thomas Jefferson, echoed this
appraisal of Washington's nature: "His temper was naturally
irritable and high-toned, but reflection and resolution had
obtained a firm and habitual ascendancy over it. If ever,
however, it broke its bonds, he was most tremendous in his
wrath."
The prodigious self-restraint enabled Washington to rise
above the sectional strife that threatened to tear the 13
states apart. He adopted a detached, even cryptic facade to
resist association with any particular faction or interest.
In a noisy world of blustering politicos, he possessed the
"gift of silence," as John Adams phrased it. Washington
articulated his secret succinctly: "With me it has always
been a maxim rather to let my designs appear from my works
than by my expressions."
The founding generation flirted with the utopian fantasy
that America would be spared parties - or "factions," as
they were styled - which they dismissed as obsolete
remnants of monarchical government. Washington didn't
foresee the savage ideological divisions that would split
his administration and the country at large. His original
"cabinet" consisted of just three men - Thomas Jefferson at
State, Henry Knox at War and Hamilton at Treasury. There
was no Justice Department, but Attorney General Edmund
Randolph served as part-time legal adviser to the
president.
Washington presided over his cabinet of prima donnas in a
civil, high-minded fashion, soliciting their opinions,
usually in writing, then weighing their merits. As Hamilton
summarized his executive style: "He consulted much,
pondered much, resolved slowly, resolved surely."
Washington didn't try to impose unity on his department
heads or color their views or stifle dissent. He was strong
enough to give free rein to vigorous internal debate. At
the same time, he endorsed the bold package of programs
drafted by his Treasury secretary to restore American
credit and establish a monetary system.
These controversial initiatives brought about the advent of
parties. The mostly Northern Federalists, led by Hamilton,
favored a strong central government and a flexible
interpretation of the Constitution, while the mostly
Southern Republicans, led by Jefferson and Madison, upheld
states' rights and strict construction.
This ideological clash - first a fissure, then a chasm -
ushered in a vitriolic style of partisan politics. This
wasn't just a case of the party in power being pummeled by
a vocal opposition. The ferocious warfare flared up, nay
issued, from Washington's own cabinet. Jefferson and
Hamilton sniped at each other with relentless gusto, each
trying to oust the other from the administration. Jefferson
schemed to introduce a resolution in Congress calling for
Hamilton's dismissal, while Hamilton blasted Jefferson in
print behind the shield of various Roman pseudonyms.
In most policy disputes, Washington had sided with Hamilton
simply because his policies had worked, as Washington once
reminded Jefferson pointedly. Another president might have
conducted a purge to foster greater cohesion among his
colleagues. But Washington clung to his idealistic vision
of tolerance and became the binding agent of a divided
country. He pleaded with Jefferson and Hamilton to cease
their assaults.
Jefferson replied loftily that he refused to be slandered
by Hamilton, "whose history, from the moment at which
history can stoop to notice him, is a tissue of
machinations against the liberty of the country." Hamilton
wasn't about to retire the heavy artillery, either. "I find
myself placed in a situation not to be able to recede for
the present," he told Washington.
It is hard to resist the impression that Washington's
tenure in office was often painfully solitary. To defend
national unity and curb partisan bickering, he had to keep
his principal advisers at arm's length. Nevertheless,
critics tagged him as a Federalist, even a doddering old
man who had become mere putty in Hamilton's nimble hands.
At first, Washington's sacred status as leader of the
revolutionary army rendered him immune to direct press
criticism, with most hostility deflected to Hamilton.
By the end of Washington's first term, however, Republican
scandalmongers had declared open season on him, accusing
him, along with Hamilton, of being a closet royalist. The
president's pent-up passion and sensitivity finally boiled
over.
Jefferson recorded Washington's memorable explosion at a
cabinet meeting in 1793: "The president was much inflamed;
got into one of those passions when he cannot command
himself; ran on much on the personal abuse which has been
bestowed on him; defied any man on earth to produce one
single act of his since he had been in the government which
was not done on the purest motives . . . that by God he had
rather be in his grave than in his present situation; that
he had rather be on his farm than to be made emperor of the
world; and yet they were charging him with wanting to be a
king."
There ensued a pause as Washington tried to regain his
composure. Even though Jefferson had helped to orchestrate
many salvos against Washington, he acknowledged the
president's acute sensitivity, noting that he was
"extremely affected by the attacks made and kept on him in
the public papers." He added, "I think he feels those
things more than any person I ever yet met with."
In his farewell address in 1796, Washington warned against
"the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of
party." By this point, however, it was abundantly clear
that the two-party system was here to stay. During his
single-term presidency, John Adams, a nominal Federalist,
tried in vain to perpetuate the notion of a president above
party labels. When his successor, Thomas Jefferson, was
inaugurated, he intoned famously, "We are all Republicans,
we are all Federalists" - a neat rhetorical flourish that
thinly disguised his status as the first president to head
a political party.
Ever since, the occupants of the White House have
experienced an uneasy tension between their role as party
leader and as president of all of the people. George
Washington never doubted which role should come first.
Ron Chernow is the author of the forthcoming "Alexander
Hamilton."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/22/opinion/22CHER.html?ex=1078458270&ei=1&en=aec777a8708b598d
