Our Constitution and the character that made George Washington indispensable
I’m reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of Benjamin Franklin. Such a brilliant man. That trait is all the more striking because he’s entirely self-made. For all the time Franklin spent abroad, particularly in London, he’s remained quintessentially American.
The American Founders disagreed on many things, but they shared a broad conviction that virtue was essential to the survival of a free people and a republican form of government. “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters,” declared Franklin.
James Madison noted that “To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.”
Yet even in a biography filled with Franklin’s brilliance, George Washington seems to occupy a different plane. I’ve always been a big Washington guy, but all the more so after reading James Thomas Flexner’s “The Indispensable Man” years ago.
Every American should also read David Boaz’s short essay “The Man Who Would Not Be King.” Boaz captures what made Washington so extraordinary: He was entrusted with immense power, yet possessed the character and self-command to relinquish it.
Washington may not have possessed Franklin’s intellectual range, nor did he come close to most of the American founders in intelligence. But through the force of his character he ultimately towered over them all. Washington inspired confidence not merely because constitutional limits restrained him, because even those who were innately suspicious of power trusted him.
I have long enjoyed the work of historian H.W. Brands, whose biography of Andrew Jackson is particularly riveting. So I was naturally drawn to his recent interview below on the life and character of George Washington.
That quality is at the heart of this clip, particularly around the 43:00 minute mark. The Founders did not fear that Washington would seize power or attempt to make himself king. They knew the character of the man, and Washington knew himself well enough to understand that power was something to surrender, not possess.
Also of note for American Habits readers, which Jeffrey Rosen quotes, is a letter from Washington to the Marquis de Lafayette in 1788. Washington said very little on substantive matters at the Constitutional Convention but remembering his words here are critical:
1st. That the general Government is not invested with more Powers than are indispensably necessary to perform the functions of a good Government; and, consequently, that no objection ought to be made against the quantity of Power delegated to it.
2ly. That these Powers (as the appointment of all Rulers will for ever arise from, and, at short stated intervals, recur to the free suffrage of the People) are so distributed among the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches, into which the general Government is arranged, that it can never be in danger of degenerating into a monarchy, an Oligarchy, an Aristocracy, or any other despotic or oppressive form, so long as there shall remain any virtue in the body of the People.
All of this explains why Light-Horse Harry Lee called him “…first in the hearts of his countrymen” and Calvin Coolidge said, “Wherever men love liberty we find a veneration for the name of George Washington.”
—Ray Nothstine
— The Federalism Beat