Ukraine and His Excellency

This past week, I've been thrilled and amazed by the images from Kiev that I've seen on television. Enduring sub-zero temperatures, citizens of Ukraine have, by the thousands, said that they will not accept their country sliding back into the despotism under which they lived as part of the Soviet Union. Equally courageously, the Supreme Court there has invalidated the most recent round of the presidential election, ordering that it be repeated.

What these brave souls have been saying is that as citizens of a democracy, they expect the transition of executive power to happen peacefully, that victor and vanquished will accept voters' verdicts magnanimously, and that power cannot be hijacked by the use of bald force or brazen manipulation.

We take the peaceful transition of power so for granted in America (at least, for the most part), that we may not realize what a stunning thing it truly is. Few societies in the history of the world have gotten the hang of it.

This is why it has been so interesting to watch the unfolding of events in Ukraine while reading Joseph J. Ellis' commendable biography of George Washington, His Excellency. As I've pointed out in an essay that appears somewhere on this blog (you can Google it), one of the many extraordinary things about Washington is that he walked away from the offer of absolute military and governmental power not once, but twice. No one in the history of the world, so far as I know, has ever done that. Before or since. To me, Washington is the preeminent political hero of all time and so I've read His Excellency with great interest.

Sometimes Ellis' version of Washington seems like a sort of Inspector Clousseau-figure, accidentally bungling into success and acclaim. This is a bit dubious to me and frankly, on the whole, I prefer Richard Norton Smith's Washington biography. (Flexner's is also excellent.) But no one has better described that crunch moment when George Washington established a precedent that America and other democracies have imitated or sought to imitate ever since.

It was March 16, 1783. The battle of Yorktown, America's decisive win over the British, fought in the Virginia Tidewater region, had effectively ended the war. But the army had not yet been disbanded, as combatants awaited word from treaty negotiators meeting across the ocean.

Washington's army, much of it encamped at Newburgh, had endured the tortures of an eight-year war with Britain, suffering unimaginable privations. They were often paid for their pains with indifference, no pay, and empty promises.

In early March, officers and soldiers, fed up with their continued mistreatment, coalesced around a cabal that has come to be known as the Newburgh Conspiracy. The conspirators planned to converge on the Congress established under the Articles of Confederation and either coerce passage of a revenue bill that would provide the soldiers with pay or overthrow the government altogether. Either way, they proposed to engage in government by thuggery.

It was a moment rife with danger, threatening to kill America's nascent democracy just as it was being born. Washington, as the preeminent person in America, would undoubtedly have been able to lead his army in taking control of the government of America. A new nation whose citizens had long been accustomed to living under royal dominion would have barely questioned the enthronement of a new King George.

But Washington got wind of the conspiracy and determined to nip it in the bud. He learned that the conspirators were planning on a mass meeting to be held on March 11. Washington said that only he could call such meetings, cancelled the first proposed gathering, and set another one for five days later. He gave a stirring speech at that meeting. Writes Ellis:

...His central message was that any attempted coup by the army was simultaneously a repudiation of the principles for which they had all been fighting and an assault on his own integrity. Whereas Cromwell and later Napoleon made themselves synonymous with the revolution in order to justify the assumption of dictatorial power, Washington made himself synonymous with the American Revolution in order to declare that it was incompatible with dictatorial power....

Ellis then quotes a portion of Washington's Newburgh address, a moving and personal testament to the purpose of the Revolution from the perspective of its greatest protagonist. When Washington, with his unmatched prestige, took his stand, the conspiracy was destroyed. Shortly, he resigned his commission as commander-in-chief of the American army and returned to Mount Vernon.

The years immediately following witnessed America struggling to establish itself, pay its debts, and become a nation under the inadequate and ungainly Articles of Confederation. Ultimately, it was replaced with the Constitution. Washington was naturally and unanimously selected the first President.

Once again, while he served as President, there were some who wanted Washington to become a king or to stay in power indefinitely. Once again, he wielded and then voluntarily walked away from power.

In so doing, Washington taught the world the lesson which the people on the streets of Kiev have been teaching the incumbent leaders of Ukraine this week. The lesson, simply, is that in a democracy, power does not belong to anybody. It's temporarily reposed in the hands of those selected by the people. And when the people have decided that the jig is up, the incumbents have no right to hold onto their power.

George Washington believed in a strong central government. He believed in a powerful standing army. He believed that the government should be presided over by a strong executive.

But he also believed in what we now call civilian control of the military. He believed in what is called a republic. And he believed that governments are only empowered by the consent of the governed.

It testifies to Washington's strength and faithfulness as a leader that all of these things that he believed in are today taken for granted in America and emulated throughout the world.

That's why as the drama in Ukraine continues to unfold, one of its central characters is offstage, his name unspoken, but his influence undeniable: George Washington, his excellency, the man who employed the power given to him to undertake the people's business...and then handed that power back to again to the people.

May the people of Ukraine be blessed with that kind of leadership--whether it be exercised voluntarily or at the instigation of the people or the courts there--in this hour of crisis and opportunity.