While there is a lot of truth in that essay, it is also true that George Washington really did "deliver the goods" and set the institution of the presidency on a mighty solid road to success. He didn't always do the right thing -- we don't elect a Saviour, just a leader -- but he did it often enough.
He knew when to placate, and when to overbear....and he knew the great secret of doing both at once. His suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion was immediately followed by the pardoning of the rebels: he demonstrated the strength of the central government...and let that demonstration serve without going the extra step of hanging the men who had risen. It indicated sympathy with their goals, but not their methods. We'd just created a nifty new contraption by which decisions could be made: let's give it a whirl before bypassing it entirely and making our choices by gun-fire.
When you study history, you see an awful lot of nascent democracies that fail. France, Germany, Russia, Iran. And you see a lot that manage to hold on to the "ramshackle institution" by the skin of their teeth, such as the Philippines in the Marcos/Aquino transition.
George Washington could easily have been a Marcos. A lot of us are going to get to vote next Tuesday, and in large part because he wasn't.
Silas
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01 February 2008, 06:23 AM
The Presidency: Myth and Reality Combine
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