George Washington and the Presidency

I don’t know when I set reading Presidential biographies as a life goal, but my first book was about Woodrow Wilson and I have been hooked ever since.  Smart has always been my sexy.  I don’t cover the Presidents in any particular order.  When I visit a Presidential library or home, I will frequently pick up a biography.  Sometimes one biography leads to another.  After reading the spectacular book, Truman, by David McCullough, I was eager to read a biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  There was an interesting contrast between those two contemporaries.  The more you read about Harry S Truman, the more you like him.  The more you find out about FDR the less you like him.  They were both effective and admirable Presidents, but Truman was clearly the better human being. 

            Sometimes you find a person that history tells you was a great man, but not a good man.  Andrew Jackson joins FDR on that list.  Others were good men, but not good Presidents.  The job simply outstripped their capacity and consumed them and the qualities that got them elected in the first place.  William Howard Taft is certainly an example of that type of person and President.  Taft was made for the judicial branch of the government and was only truly happy once he got there—at the end of his political career.  Gerald R. Ford was probably one of the most decent human beings to ever hold the office.  He was right to pardon Nixon, though it proved his political undoing, but he lacked the long term vision of a truly good President.  Lyndon Johnson was a great visionary and highly skilled politician (that man would have brought both Boehner and Reid to the wood shed and had them both crying like a little girl) but he was not a nice person. 

            I am about a third of the way through the list of American Presidents and have just finished Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow.  This Pulitzer Prize winning biography is, simply put, the best Presidential biography I have ever read.  Not only is it a great book, but it opened my eyes to a man whose mythology has not served him well.  Washington is so much better than the stories we heard about him as children.  He truly does deserve the revered title of, “Father of Our Country.”  He deserves it not because of his mythology, but because of his humanity.  Like many Presidents, he has suffered both from the adoration of his fans and the criticism of his foes.  Neither serves the man well.  He was smarter than we usually think, and his honesty, grace and civic goodness created the Presidency.  The simple truth, as Abigail Adams said, is his greatest eulogy.  

             These books make me mindful of how history will judge all of our Presidents.  One of the things made manifest by reading biographies is how little personal popularity has to do with how history judges the men who occupy the Presidency.  Truman was sadly unpopular when he left office, but is generally considered a, “near great” President.  I strongly believe that George W. Bush is going to be found in that same category.  JFK was almost elevated to sainthood after his tragic assassination, but has fallen in historical ratings and will continue to do so.  I’m pretty sure that Obama is going to be in that same boat.  The term, “a mile wide and an inch deep” keeps coming to mind. 

            I want our next President to be like Washington, who helped this country keep the faith.

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