On this day

Read the article linked in this embedded tweet from American Experience.

With a unanimous vote, the Electoral College chose George Washington for president #OnThisDay in 1789.

In the 230 years since, no other candidate has received a unanimous vote... except for Washington, who repeated the feat in 1792.https://t.co/Gss0Q7Zs9Q

— American Experience (@AmExperiencePBS) February 4, 2019

On this date...

...in 1799, George Washington, the father of our country, passed away after a short illness. To mark the anniversary, the people of George Washington's Mount Vernon published this today.

The last time I visited Mount Vernon I became choked up when standing in the bed room in which Washington died. Having read many accounts of the death scene, I knew that his passing was as noble and unassuming as the man himself had become over the course of his life.

Historian Garry Wills once asserted that Washington was the greatest political leader in the history of the world. I agree. By his example, he demonstrated that executive leadership need not be authoritarian and that it can be passed along to a successor democratically and peacefully. Every American owes Washington an enormous debt of gratitude.

There are two Washington biographies I especially recommend:

Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow
Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation by Richard Norton Smith

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Ulysses Grant and what we need in presidents

Historian Michael Beschloss posted this on Twitter.

Ulysses Grant died today 1885--here a few weeks before the end, completing his memoirs: #LOC pic.twitter.com/qOG2sBivxR

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) July 23, 2016

That set me to thinking...and tweeting:

[Grant] was, in many ways, a remarkable man, but ill-suited for the presidency.
Of course, that begs question, what suits someone for president?
I feel previous elective office is less a predictor than are temperament, character, leadership record, [and] a willingness to compromise.
Washington, with little elective political experience; Lincoln, with much; FDR, with much; and Eisenhower, with none, stand out among our presidents to me.

Only FDR had been a "successful" pol before taking office. All had successful, significant presidencies.

The one trait they all shared is temperament. Washington & Eisenhower overcame/channeled volcanic tempers to be nearly perfect leaders, Lincoln overcame much and chose his way to a leaders' temperament; FDR had, as Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "a second class intellect, but a first class temperament."

I'm not sure having an even temperament or self-control matters to voters in these zero-sum days.

For the next president: NATO and other security partnerships

An interesting article from earlier this year that appeared in The American Interest. If you're not a subscriber (which I am not), this will be the only piece you can read from the site this month.

I think there's a general failure to understand the need for security arrangements like NATO or the one the US has with Japan. This need has been demonstrated by history.

Russia's ability to wreak havoc and the need for intergovernmental cooperation in combating things like terrorism are compelling reasons for keeping NATO, for example.

The USA's decision to keep Japan demilitarized and under the American nuclear umbrella has, for decades, prevented a nuclear arms race between China and Japan, also, proponents would say, something that would be contrary to US interests.

What, some will wonder, about George Washington's warning, given in his farewell address, against "entangling alliances."

Washington's words have often been used by people like the "America Firsters" who, after the rise of Hitler, effectively prevented the US from working with other western democracies to, at first, thwart and then, to defeat, the Nazis. Millions of lives were lost as a result of the drag they inflicted on American policies.

Washington was, in fact, the father not only of his country, but also of US foreign policy realism. His warning against "entangling alliances" was rooted in his historical context and was advanced in service to the guiding light of his approach to foreign affairs: to always do what was in the best interests of the country.

At that time, that meant keeping the fledgling United States from becoming a partisan in the conflict between the western world's superpowers of the time, England and France. To be associated closely with either one, to be allied with one country or the other, would put the development of the then-delicate United States at risk. Washington wanted to give the US breathing room to develop its political and economic life, to be able to engage in trade with both of the two major powers without picking sides. When you're the littlest and weakest kid on the block, it's best not to rile up the two neighborhood bullies.

Had Washington been around at the end of World War 2, when the US emerged as the preeminent power of the world, at that time hurtling into a Cold War with a third world economy that had atomic weapons (the Soviet Union), I'm sure that his counsel would still have been to do what was in the best interests of America. At that time, that would entail recognizing the country's changed status among nations and understanding the need to provide leadership to alliances that preserved the freedom and stability for the US. NATO was one of the post-war institutions that did that.

Many argue today that NATO has outlived its usefulness. As indicated above, some disagree with that. They also would say that mutual security arrangements are beneficial to US security and allows this country to act as the "senior partner" in security arrangements with other countries.

It seems to me that the Achilles heel of these arrangements, alluded to in the linked piece, is the failure of nations under the US security umbrella to pay their fair share in manpower, arms, and money. As the article also says, this has allowed western European partner nations to develop social insurance policies that the US doesn't feel it can afford, in part because of other outlays, including those for NATO.

History demonstrates that a United States turned in on itself is less secure than one engaged with the world.

How that might be expressed today is a political issue and I don't advance political opinions here, just historical observations.

But my observation is that addressing how to renew partnerships like NATO in light of cyber-terrorism, terrorism, and the aggression of nations like Russia and China is probably something that should occupy the time and thinking of the next president and the American people.

Four books

I mentioned David McCullough's book, The Wright Brothers, in a post last night. I finished reading it a few days ago. It's a great and surprisingly quick read and the first of all the biographies of the Wrights that I have read that have helped this caveman mind appreciate the peculiar insights the brothers had that allowed them to break through to powered, heavier-than-air flight. As I said last evening, like all of McCullough's books, this one is a treat!

Yesterday, I began reading Joseph Ellis' The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution: 1783-1789. Ellis looks at the development of the United States Constitution in the period following the end of the Revolution and narrates the key roles played by the "quartet" of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison in bringing the governing document into being. Absent their work, the new republic would have been doomed to chaos and susceptible to foreign conquerors as it labored to get out of debt and establish itself under the ineffectual Articles of Confederation. The Constitution was the second American Revolution. Ellis, as always, writes well, clearly, and insightfully. (This fits with a contention I've often made here that the American Revolution was not completed until the Constitution was ratified.)

I'm also now reading Bill Mowry's The Ways of the Alongsider, a helpful guidebook on how Christians can share their faith with others, life to life. Over the past year, Bill has been my coach in deepening my walk with Christ. He's as helpful in print as he is one-on-one.

And, in the wake of the decision to resume referring to the mountain we once called Mount McKinley as Mount Denali, I'm re-reading Kevin Phillips' short biography President William McKinley. Of all the US presidents to come from Ohio, McKinley was by far the best. Phillips argues that the Canton native was a consequential president in two ways.

First, he upended the partisan logjam that had for several decades produced Republican presidents interspersed with Democratic presidents, back and forth, leaving the country with no clear policy direction for more than twenty years. McKinley created what remained a sustained Republican occupation of the White House, with the exception of a narrow victory for Woodrow Wilson--brought about by Theodore Roosevelt's 1912 run for president on the Progressive Party ticket, thus dividing Republicans--from 1896 to 1932, when Democrat Franklin Roosevelt brought basic dominion for his party through 1968.

Second, McKinley, Phillips argues, is not Mount Rushmore-worthy, but safely near the top of the second-tier of effective presidents. He was, it can be argued, the first modern US president in both domestic and foreign policy.

Phillips' discussion of the unique role Ohio played in nineteenth century America alone makes the book worth reading. The state was the country's greatest center of innovation, business risk, and scientific inquiry, playing a part in world history that California's Silicon Valley later played some one-hundred years later.

I recommend all these books. (By the way, I'm indifferent to the change in name for Mount Denali. A more appropriate memorial for William McKinley can certainly be found.)

The father of US currency should stay on US currency

I'm in favor of putting the images of important women from our history on US currency. 

But I hope that this will never be done at the expense of honoring Alexander Hamilton. 

George Will has rightly said that we honor Jefferson, but we live in Hamilton's country. 

For his indefatigable advocacy of the ratification of the Constitution and his work as the first secretary of the treasury, through which he helped unite the United States of America, no one had more to do with fashioning the nation we live than Hamilton. 

I feel that apart from George Washington, Alexander Hamilton was the greatest of the Revolutionary War-generation.

See here.

The Book of Judges and a "Modest" Proposal

Reading the Old Testament book of Judges with the people of Living Water Lutheran Church in the past week has underscored an important truth articulated famously by Lord Acton: "Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

The Old Testament judges started out as people without status. But God called them to exercise military and judicial authority on behalf of His people. The judges often had success. But they often forgot that their power was from God, became selfish and self-serving.

Government, in a world composed of fallen human beings, is necessary. The Bible teaches that governmental authority is God's idea, an emergency measure necessitated by the human penchant for selfishness and injustice. Christians are enjoined in the New Testament to pray for those in authority.

But what Judges makes clear is that power is a danger to the souls of those who exercised it and therefore, a danger to those over whom power is exercised.

It seems to me that in addition to terms of office, the dangers of power might be mitigated or minimized by deciding as a society that we won't elect anyone to the presidency or any other public office who wants those offices.

Those who desire power, irrespective of their party, are probably more prone to the abuse of power and a sense of entitlement than others who are more indifferent to it.

America has been and remains fortunate that we have never had a tyrant in the presidency, partly because of the genius of our constitutional system. But we have seen in the presidency of Richard Nixon how corrupting the desire for power can be.

So far as I know, only two of our presidents came to office without seeking it: George Washington and Franklin Pierce. Washington was a triumph, worthy of historian Garry Wills' assessment that Washington is the greatest political leader in world history. Pierce was a lowest common denominator choice of pols in a smoke-filled room and was a disaster.

That 50% success rate doesn't daunt me. I would much rather opt for picking people not animated by a desire for power than for those who disingenuously insist that they only want power as a means of doing good.

It's all a pipe dream, of course. But if, by this principle, we had a 50% chance of getting an even a lower-case Washington, wouldn't it be worth trying?

Speaking of George Washington

Here's a collection of posts I've written about the first president over the years.

Another Book Goes Onto the Amazon Wish List

It's this one. George Washington is one of my heroes and the story of his coming out of his "retirement" from public life in order to preside over the Philadelphia convention that hammered out the U.S. Constitution is a story worth telling. I'll have to wait awhile before reading it though.

(Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for mentioning that he had just ordered the book. That's not an endorsement of Reynolds' quirky politics, by the way. I read a bit of everything when I have the chance. Reynolds has been kind in linking to some of my blog posts in the past.)

Leadership Lessons from Lincoln

Mark Roberts writes: "I find it fascinating the extent to which Lincoln’s leadership of our nation was directly related to his leadership of himself."

The same was true of Washington and Eisenhower. You will not long lead others if you cannot lead yourself. And, I would add, you're not likely to be able to lead yourself for positive, worthy ends unless you're following Christ.

Remembering Valley Forge

The Valley Forge National Park has a tremendous set of web posts delving into the history of the critical, life-threatening encampment of the fledgling United States Army under the command of George Washington during the Revolutionary War.

You can read the first profile of the people involved in this encampment, which began on December 19, 1777 and continued through a bitterly cold winter, here.

 If you've never been to Valley Forge, I recommend a visit highly. It helps make vivid all the sacrifices made and hardships endured by Washington and his army in order to simply keep the fledgling American republic alive and to pursue the war of survival and attrition needed to make independence from Great Britain possible.

Especially Thankful for George Washington Today

Watching what's happening in the Middle East, where sick men have held onto power for decades, I'm thankful to live in the United States.

Here, we take for granted the peaceful transition of executive power.

The human instrument by which that incredible blessing has come to us was George Washington.

As I've pointed out before, Washington turned down the offer of absolute power more than once. Most notably, of course, he did when he resigned his commission as general of the US Army at the close of the Revolutionary War and then again, when he refused to hold onto the presidency, instead voluntarily retiring to Mount Vernon, his home in Virginia.

The pressure on Washington, who, except for periods when the American cause appeared lost during the Revolution, was an almost deified public figure, to become a dictator was almost constant. In one famous incident during the war, Washington learned that American officers, disgusted with Congress' failure to pay them their salaries, were plotting to overthrow Congress and give absolute power to Washington. In his typically self-controlled manner, Washington called the officers together and defused their plot, calling it shocking. Always a master of political theater, Washington won the day when, as he prepared to read a letter from the Congress, he paused to pull out a pair of eyeglasses. Nobody had ever seen Washington wear glasses before. He explained, “Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country.” Grown men who had watched Washington's heroics during the war and loved him, began to weep. The plot was extinguished and this country's trajectory toward becoming a true republic was established.

In their book, The American President, Philip B. Kunhardt, Jr., Philip B. Kunhardt III, and Peter W. Kunhardt, observe that in its formative years, the United States, a nation that declared itself into being, but whose constituent states had little experience of working together or of seeing themselves as part of a single nation, had little in the way of a national character. The galvanizing Washington, they say, lent his character to the United States. The new country took shape largely in his image.

That's a very good thing. Had the United States borrowed Thomas Jefferson's character, for example, one could see it quite quickly devolving into what the founders called "mobocracy," a chaotic and splintered mess. Had it borrowed the character of of John Adams, it likely would have broken apart under attempts at too much centralization. Washington, as general and as first US president, exercised the incredible self-control and focus of purpose that was his trademark to allow an unlikely collection of independent colonies to become what it has become (and still strives to be): a place in which liberty and mutual accountability are held in balance to maximize the freedom of people, a model for most of the democratic nations of the world.

Washington was not perfect. While it's clear that he was moving toward a belief in emancipation of slaves, he shared the blindness of whites in his time to the sin of racism. As a general, he was less of a military tactician, his plans often bogging down from their Rube Goldberg-complexity, than he was a political general, recognizing fairly early in the war that his main obligation was to keep his army intact and win a battle of attrition against an empire he hoped would tire of fighting.

As president however, Washington had perfect pitch. Always good at listening to the best counsel from the best minds and then making the best decisions, he showed this capacity throughout his eight years. Recognizing that the United States needed time to develop free of outside pressures, he wisely steered clear of aligning the country with either Great Britain or France in their struggles. Knowing the country needed to be established as a unified entity, he embraced Alexander Hamilton's plan for assuming the massive debts the states had incurred during the Revolution, thereby knitting the country together. Sponsoring Hamilton's broader economic plans, Washington ensured that free enterprise would flourish in the United States.

During most of his second term, Washington endured vicious--and anonymous--attacks on his character sponsored by Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe, among others. But Washington, as always, bore it and overcame it, comporting himself with dignity.

My son once asked me who my greatest heroes were. You have to be careful about naming heroes. I never want to engage in hero worship; the only Person I worship is the God made known in Jesus Christ.

I esteem the apostles, who carried the Gospel of Jesus into the world. Martin Luther and Billy Graham are also special figures to me.

But in the political realm, George Washington is without peer, a man who overcame his own rugged upbringing, his lack of formal education, and volcanic passions, learning to control himself and so, becoming the farmer-statesman he early envisioned himself becoming. I agree with historian Garry Wills, who, in an interview on CSPAN once said that George Washington was the greatest political leader of all time.

I think that's indisputably true. And even King George III, the monarch from whom independence was gained in the American Revolution, seems to have agreed. Informed by American painter Benjamin West that it was Washington's intention to go home to Mount Vernon at the end of the Revolution, King George said, "If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world." Washington did and in his time, he was.
 
Below are links to some of my favorite Washington biographies.

The word of the day...

...is quondam. It means "erstwhile, former, once, onetime." I don't remember ever seeing the word until I ran across it in Ron Chernow's fantastic new biography of George Washington the other day.

He uses it in his discussion of a threat to Washington's first bid for re-election to the Colonial Era-Virginia House of Burgesses in 1761. That challenge came from a former fellow officer of Washington's from the French and Indian War, Adam Stephen. In the course of the campaign, Chernow writes:

Washington...castigated his quondam friend Stephen as "designing" and unprincipled.

Quondam is a curiosity. But I think that it's an unnecessary word. Why use quondam when former or once will do?

"Self-control is the key to accomplishing anything in life and I am convinced that it only lastingly belongs to those who daily surrender their wills to Jesus Christ"

Today's installment of Our Daily Bread contains a favorite story of mine from the life of Dwight Eisenhower, who is one of my personal heroes.

The story recounted is one Ike told in his wonderful personal memoir, At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends. If you haven't read this book, treat yourself and do so soon!

Galatians 5:22-23 says that self-control is one of the fruits of the Spirit which Christians receive through their relationship with Jesus Christ. Daily repentance and renewal in the Name of Christ can bring this attribute into our lives and in turn, help us to live more productively, as well as more faithfully.

The section of Proverbs on which the Our Daily Bread piece is based is a particularly favorite part of that Old Testament book for me. 

Proverbs 16:21b rings so true! We are far more likely to gain a hearing for our ideas and more apt to listen to the ideas of others when we engage in "pleasant speech." That means, I think, speaking the truth in love, as the New Testament counsels.

V. 25 is an important bit of wisdom, next to which I've written this in one of my Bibles, attempting to put the passage in my own words: "Don't rely on your intelligence, but on God's revealed wisdom." 


V. 26 makes me smile every time I read it. My margin note there says that "hunger" is the "prod in productivity." I don't know whether I read that somewhere or if it just struck me, but it's rooted in what God revealed to Solomon here in any case.


V. 28 reminds us that gossiping is contrary to God's will and that it is incredibly destructive.


V. 32 is the passage on which the Our Daily Bread piece is especially built. Those who allow the God revealed in Israel and ultimately, in the Person of Jesus Christ, to conquer their anger, are those whom God can use to make a difference with their lives. In a very real sense, the good accomplished by Dwight Eisenhower--whether it was the destruction of Nazi Germany, the passage of the first Civil Rights Law (1957) in more than ninety years (over the objections of Senators John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson), playing hardball with the US military in which he formerly served to ensure that President Truman's integration of our Armed Forces was a fact and not just an executive order, or instituting the interstate highway system--accomplished so much good because he had control of his volcanic temper and could therefore work with anybody. 

This was valued in Eisenhower; today, it seems, at least those who are the most angry and who garner the most attention, irrespective of their ideologies, prefer political leaders who give vent to their anger, rather than being persons of self-control who can work with those with whom they disagree.


Another of my personal heroes, George Washington, also learned self control over not only his temper, but also his impulsiveness. He therefore achieved great things. (In fact, I once heard historian Garry Wills say that Washington was the greatest political leader in human history.) 

Self-control did not come to Washington naturally. As a young colonial officer, he incurred justified condemnation for leading his men into a precipitate, ill-conceived battle, resulting in many unnecessary deaths. But Washington learned from this tragedy. His faith, an underestimated aspect of his life as pointed out in my favorite Washington biography, that by Richard Norton Smith, no doubt played a role in Washington's famed self-control and ability to get along with others. 

Washington could still let loose with his anger in his more mature years. But at that time, it always seemed targeted, dealt for a purpose. He needed every ounce of self-control he could find to hold the Revolutionary Army together through a long war of attrition with Great Britain, then the greatest military power in the world, for example. 

He demonstrated this same self-control when on two occasions, he squelched attempts to make him  king of the newly independent United States. The first occasion came when he went back to Mount Vernon after the war, when many in his army and not a few in the country at large, conspired to put Washington on an American throne. (When advised before the end of the war that Washington planned to refuse kingly power and instead, go back to farm in Virginia, British king, George III said. "If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.") 

Again, when Washington was almost forcibly made president in order to hold the infant republic together, many suggested that he should become king. But again, Washington demurred and went back to Mount Vernon to take up private life at the end of two terms.

Self-control is the key to accomplishing anything in life and I am convinced that it only lastingly belongs to those who daily surrender their wills to Jesus Christ. 

Paul writes in Romans 8, that believers are "more than conquerors" through the God Who has loved us through the crucified Savior, Jesus. This isn't an invitation to arrogance or triumphalism; Christians know that our only boast is the goodness of God that comes to us as gift of grace through Christ. But Paul is saying that all who trust in Christ, also share in Christ's victory over our death-dealing egotism, our sin, and our death.


V. 33 may seem strange to us today. But in Biblical times, believers would ask God's guidance over particular decisions before them, then cast lots in the belief that God would answer their prayers, and tell them what they should do. Whatever the process we use to lay our needs before God and even if we make bad decisions with good intentions, the believer in God knows that in the end, God, not us, is the ultimate decider.

Our Great Philadelphia Adventure (Part 2)

It wasn't all fun, education, and inspiration on our just-ended trip to Philadelphia.

We also ate. I had to have authentic Philadelphia Cheese Steaks. I got them at two places. The first was in downtown Philly, just blocks from Independence Hall: Sonny's.

There's nothing fancy about Sonny's. It's simple, in your face fare. (The ambiance reminds of me my all-time favorite pizza place, Tommy's, in Columbus.) You can eat inside or, if you can find a spot on beautiful fall day like we enjoyed two days ago, out on the sidewalk. According to Sunny's, authentic Cheese Steak uses Cheese Whiz. I couldn't go there. Provolone suited me fine. You could tell that the cut of meat was high quality. It was great, although there's no indication that Sunny has found a way to remove the cholesterol from the sandwich.

Yesterday, we were in Chadds Ford, a suburb of Philadelphia. A little spot called Hank's Place, which we later learned is frequented by local Andrew Wyeth, appeared from the outside to be a good place for lunch. Little did we know that we'd found a gem. The restaurant was packed. Regulars waiting in line told us that everything on their menu was great. Their Cheese Steak, which used an even better cut of meat, was outstanding.

We were in Chadds Ford to visit the Brandywine River Museum and the home and studio of Andrew Wyeth's father, N.C. Wyeth. The museum had displays that included the works of various illustrator/artists, people who, like the first Wyeth, have done both commercial art for magazines, advertisers, and books and what's called "fine art." Among the artists represented in the display are Maxfield Parrish and Howard Pyle, the latter being Wyeth's mentor. The tour of Wyeth's home and art studio is informative and fun.

In Philadelphia on Friday, in addition to seeing Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, we also took in a display of the portraits by Charles Wilson Peale and other of his late-eighteenth, early-nineteenth century contemporaries of important historical figures of that period. Peale was a showman, part Da Vinci, part Walt Disney, part P.T. Barnum, part scientist and historian. His museum in Philadelphia was a way for ordinary folks to not only see samples of the world's animal and plant life, but also to look at the faces of the celebrities and heroes of their time. Peale's portraits in particular, now in what was the Second National Bank in Philadelpia, appear not only to faithfully render the faces of his subjects, they also seem to convey something of who they were. One of his portraits of John Adams, for example, seems to catch the second president in mid-sentence, about to turn to you with a clinching argument. His Jefferson seems duly aloof, yet ready in an instant, to employ his vaunted charm when necessary.

And if all of this weren't enough for our family obsessed with history, we also went to Valley Forge, where Washington and his battered army wintered in 1777-78, and what's now called Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania, where the miraculous crossing of the Delaware River on Christmas, 1776, took place.

Also worthy of mention and a visit: Washington Memorial Chapel at Valley Forge and Christ Church in Philadelphia.

Our Great Philadelphia Adventure (Part 1)

I've been away for a few days. We went to Philadelphia, my first trip there in thirty-nine years. What a great city!

Of course, we went to Independence Hall. It is amazing to be in the room where the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution came into being.

But I got goosebumps when we walked into another chamber of what was, in Colonial days, the Pennsylvania state house. I recognized the room instantly from portrayals in books and film. It was where the US House of Representatives met for ten years and was the place in which our second president, John Adams, was inaugurated. As Adams delivered his Inaugural Address on March 4, 1797, Thomas Jefferson, the incoming vice president, was seated to his right, and George Washington, the outgoing president, was two seats away.

This event is important because it represents the first time in world history that the chief executive of a nation voluntarily and peacefully stepped down to allow a duly elected successor to take that same position.

We take this for granted these days. But we shouldn't.

After all, up to that point in human experience, power was taken, wielded, and maintained with violence. It was ceded by force of death or by surrender. Here was a leader who could have, had he chosen, held onto executive power until he died. But Washington happily turned the presidency over to Adams and retired to his Mount Vernon estate.

It's a tribute not only to the honorable characters of Washington and Adams that this peaceful transfer of power happened. It also spoke volumes about the other framers of the US Constitution, ratified just eight years before.

The Declaration of Independence trumpeted people's right to be free. But the Constitution, created to replace the weak, ineffectual, and naive if well-intentioned Articles, understood that even free people must opt for mutual responsibility and accountability.

The basic underlying insight of the Constitution is that free people are people, meaning that they're imperfect. The Constitution, imperfect in itself, reflected the hard-won wisdom of pragmatists who saw that human nature being what it is, you can't allow a nation, dedicated to the proposition that all are created equal--paraphrasing Lincoln--to destroy the promise of equality by leaving everything to chance or to people's good will.

Liberty without accountability and freedom without a government strong enough or active enough to prevent the strong and powerful from running roughshod over the humble or constrained enough to prevent it from running roughshod over everyone, is anarchy. The Framers understood this.

Of course, having a philosophical understanding of an important truth about humanity is one thing. Acting on it is another. The Framers did that.

Fortunately for we Americans and for people from every other country who have taken heart from the example given in 1797, Washington believed in the twin principles of the United States--liberty and mutual accountability--and acted accordingly.

March 4/5 Inspiration for Walter Mittys Everywhere

The overnight hours of March 4 and March 5 mark the two-hundred thirty-first anniversary of a remarkable military feat, one made possible by an even more remarkable feat that preceded it.

As the New England winter unfolded in 1776, Boston was occupied by the British, soldiers in its streets, sailors in its harbor. George Washington, newly appointed commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, wanted desperately to take Boston from the Brits, commanded by Sir William Howe.

But, Washington who had long ago learned to rein in his impulse for recklessness, knew that he simply didn't have the artillery he needed to take advantage of his position on the heights overlooking the great New England city.

That's where Henry Knox comes in. Knox was a rotund Boston bookseller who, before the outbreak of the war, extensively read military history and strategy. Like many who develop armchair expertise, Knox wondered whether he mightn't excel in the field of his intense interest and reading. With little to commend him, Washington appointed Knox to be the chief of his army's artillery.

The problem was that Washington had virtually no artillery to command. But Knox, who must be an inspiration to every Walter Mitty who has ever fantasized about achieving great things, had a plan. It was an outrageous one: He would go to the recently-taken British Fort Ticonderoga, with its cache of cannon and artillery, and transport the big guns 300-miles over the winter snows of upstate New York and through Massachusetts to the heights overlooking Boston. And he would move them on sleds built on the fly at Ticonderoga.

Amazingly, Washington approved the venture. Getting to Ticonderoga in the early part of December, Knox brought the artillery to Washington in mid-January. It was an amazing achievement!

It was the possession of these guns that emboldened Washington to try retaking Boston. The plan was to dig in at Dorchester Heights and call the Redcoats out, making them sitting ducks for the American forces peering down at them behind their enormous cannon. As James L. Stokesbury writes:

The American operation opened with a preliminary covering bombardment. On the night of March 4-5, the troops moved onto the heights and began hammering the frozen ground, under cover of the noise of the guns. Twelve-hundred Yankees with picks, shovels, and crowbars could do a lot of work in the course of a night. British officers heard them, but did not bother to anything about it. So with the dawn, there were the fortifications crowning the heights, and Sir William and his miserable band stood agape. Howe reported home that at least 12,000 men must have been working on the position; his chief engineer thought it would have needed 20,000. There must be a great horde of rebels about if they could do that.

A.J. Langguth writes memorably of what happened on the morning of March 5 and subsequently:

In the morning, Howe found that Boston was now vulnerable to an attack from Dorchester Heights whenever Washington chose to fire Henry Knox's cannon. The March rains that drenched the town made Howe's muskets worthless. As he already had permission to withdraw his men, Howe decided to leave Boston as quickly as he could.

Washington watched the British make their undignified retreat--"in so much hurry, precipitation and confusion as ever troops did"--and shared his glee with his brother John, home in Virginia. Howe ordered his baggage wagons and artillery carts thrown off the docks, along with several hundred blankets. But in his haste he left behind mortars, cannon and shell. On Sunday, March 17, 1776, the British army and twelve hundred loyalists boarded ships to sail away from Boston.

For Washington, the twin miracles of Knox's three-hundred mile sled ride with British cannon and the emplacement of massive fortifications overnight on March 4 and 5, were welcomed events.

Shortly before, American forces had suffered a humiliating rebuff in Canada, in spite of the fact that many in the rebellious colonies had assumed the Americans would be welcomed by the Canadians as liberators and friends.

The evacuation of the British from Boston encouraged Americans to believe that they could win their war.

It also gave them confidence in the commander-in-chief who had won the victory and who had wisely picked Henry Knox to be his commander of artillery.

Washington, almost always a good judge of talented and trustworthy subordinates, would later turn to Knox again, making the one-time Boston bookseller the first Secretary of War in his first years as President.

[Above: Washington at Dorchester Heights; a portrait of Henry Knox and a cannon]

Where You're At on States' Rights May Depend on Your Being 'In' or 'Out'

How one begins an enterprise has a tremendous impact on how it develops. That's true of companies and colleges, churches and countries. It can be good or bad. It can even be good and bad.

When the European powers colonized the New World, land grants were made to various corporations and individuals. Those varied lands over time evolved into individual colonies, each with their own institutions. Most on the Atlantic seaboard eventually became the domain of Britain.

Along came the American Revolution which saw the British colonies improbably defeating Britain and winning independence. But independence for whom?

There were two major strains of opinion about that question.

On the one hand there was the view of people like Thomas Jefferson. They adhered to what might be called a republican perspective. (Note the small r.) They believed that thirteen individual states, tied together in a loose and voluntary confederation, each of whose governments were closer to the people, had won the right to be independent and sovereign states.

Given the fears of distant, centralized governments, born of the colonists' experiences with Britain, this republican perspective may have been the prevailing view of citizens in the new United States of America. The majority's republican ideology informed the adoption of the Articles of Confederation. It also explains why there was so much resistance to altering them in spite of their ineffectiveness.

A second view, which, according to Joseph Ellis in his new biography, was the view of George Washington, held that the compelling reasons for the struggle to gain independence had less to do with the philosophical niceties of republicanism than the desire to be an independent power. Washington and like-minded revolutionaries didn't share the republicans' fears of a strong central government that could override the policies and laws of individual states. Writes Ellis:

Washington regarded the American revolution as a movement to establish both American independence and American nationhood; indeed, he did not believe that you could have one without the other. Most of the officers in the Continental army shared this view, because they had also experienced the frustrations of trying to fight and win a war without a federal government empowered to provide resources in the reliable fashion of the British ministry. The fear that haunted Washington was not of excessive federal power reminiscent of Parliament's arbitrary and imperial policies, but rather that of a weak confederation reminiscent of the Continental Congress's woefully inadequate performance during the war.

Washington, Ellis points out, in private correspondence expressed his contempt for the Articles of Confederation, adopted at the behest of the republicans. Washington felt that only a strong central government could help the newly independent states attain financial solvency and fend off destruction by other powers.

Eventually of course, a convention originally brought together for the purpose of strengthening the Articles of Confederation promulgated the United States Constitution. Patrick Henry, that devoted republican, condemned the new document, saying that he "smelt a rat." Thomas Jefferson, then in France, was initially quite cool to the Constitution as well. But eventually, the arguments which Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, dedicated federalists, and James Madison, then a bridge figure between the two major views, made in The Federalist Papers, prevailed.

The fact is that federalism and its concomitants, strong central government and states' rights, didn't necessarily result from a philosophically-driven argument about how the new nation could best govern itself, but from the exigencies of history. This is important to remember when considering the claims of Jonah Goldberg in an otherwise-brilliant recent column in the Manchester Union-Leader. There, Goldberg says:

For years I’ve been ranting that federalism is the greatest system ever conceived to maximize human happiness.

Yes, probably. But it's only an accident of history, the result of our colonial past and the needs of two competing bodies of opinion to work out a compromise to keep an embryonic republic (Washington always referred to the new nation as an "empire") from imploding or being beset by foreign armies.

On becoming the country's first President, George Washington had to be careful not to offend republican sensibilities. While he wanted to establish the new central government as the highest governing authority of the country, he was respectful of the tenuous compromise between those advocating states' rights and those in favor of a strong central government embodied in the Constitution. He also needed to be careful not to show any signs of taking on the perquisites or trappings of royalty. (In spite of the great care Washington did show in this latter area, he was increasingly accused of being a latter-day King George during his second term.)

To say that Washington was reticent about legislative initiatives during his presidency would be an understatement. He tended to stay out of and above the fray of legislative wrangling, instead mostly operating as an other-worldly father figure. What this meant was that Washington's federalist views sometimes prevailed and sometimes didn't, depending entirely on who else was championing them.

When it came to establishing a unified national economy, something in which Washington believed, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton was a firm, insightful, innovative, and perseverant advocate. Here, the federalist view defeated that of the republicans.

The Constitution had left the organization of the federal legal system and how it related to the laws of individual states fairly vague. Washington wanted a strong body of unified federal law with little variation, if any, among the legal codes of the states. But he could not and did not push his view. In the absence of any spear-carrier for federalism, the states were given tremendous judicial latitude. So, the doctrine of states' rights was firmly established in legal matters.

For much of the country's history, I think it's fair to say that the notion of states' rights has been a convenient tool for those who may not have had particular passions for the doctrine, but wanted to thwart specific federal policies. Thomas Jefferson, for example, authored legislation passed in two different states, claiming that individual states could prevent the enforcement of federal statutes within their domains. Jefferson's notion of "popular sovereignty" was repudiated. Later, in the struggle for civil rights for African-Americans, some advanced the cause of states' rights as a means of thwarting that struggle.

Beginning in the late 1940s, signaled by Truman's integration of the Armed Forces and Hubert Humphrey's successful fight to include a strong civil rights plank in the 1948 Democratic platform, the Democrats, genetic heirs of the republicans, came to be seen as enemies of states' rights. Increasingly, Democrats favored using the federal government to address a broad array of issues that might once have been considered the exclusive purview of state governments (i.e., education, voters' rights). Democrats were also seen as advocates of using the federal judicial system to do much more than what their opponents claimed that the Constitution envisioned for the federal government.

The 1964 nomination of Barry Goldwater as the Republican presidential candidate, signaled that their party, the genetic heirs of the federalists (the progression was federalists to Whigs to Republicans), were the advocates of states' rights. Unlike their Democratic counterparts, the Republicans advocated a limited federal government that took a hands-off view of what they saw as state perquisites and responsibilities. They also wanted federal judges who took a "strict constructionist" view of the Constitution, refusing to invent law and always taking into account the "original intent" of the document's framers.

Notice that these were the views of the "ins" and the "outs," respectively. While Richard Nixon succesfully won the White House in 1968 and 1972, he always had to deal with Democratic majorities in the Congress and federal judiciary still full of Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson appointees. (In fact, it wasn't until ten years ago, that the House came under the control of the Republicans.) The Republicans were the congenital "outs" and as Goldberg notes in his column, speaking for persons of his own conservative views:

As conservatives have known for decades, federalism is the defense against an offensive federal government.

But now the worm has turned. A "conservative" administration is pushing policies that are seen by some as intrusive. "Liberals" are trying to combat President Bush by appealing to federalism and the doctrine of states' rights. Some conservatives, like Goldberg are disappointed by what they see as decidedly un-conservative use of power to achieve conservative ends. He writes:

The bad news, alas, is that conservative support for federalism has waned at exactly the moment they could have enshrined the ideal in policy. Just last week, the Bush administration argued against California’s medical marijuana law. Bush is also moving ahead toward a constitutional prohibition on gay marriage. After decades of arguments that Washington should stay out of education, Bush has made it his signature domestic issue.

It’s not that the White House doesn’t have good arguments for its policies. But it is impossible to restore federalism unless you start by allowing states to make decisions you dislike. Otherwise, it’s not federalism, it’s opportunism.

Another example of what Goldberg is talking about may be the current battle over the clean-up of nuclear wastes at the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington State. The Bush Department of Energy is suing the State of Washington because of a state ballot initiative passed there which, essentially, regulates what the federal government does with the materials there. It's popular sovereignty all over again, it would seem.

What would George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Harry Truman, Hubert Humphrey, and Barry Goldwater think about all of this? I have no idea. But I do know two things:

(1) People tend to adhere to the doctrine of states' rights most fiercely when the other guy is in power;

(2) Our arguments about states' rights and federal power would probably not be so pronounced if the thirteen colonies that won their freedom from Britain had originally been one colony. Proof again that history matters.

Learning About Washington Through Hamilton

Last night, I finished reading Richard Brookhiser's Alexander Hamilton, American. It's not so much a biography as it is a biographical essay about America's first Secretary of the Treasury and the primary author of The Federalist Papers, the series of essays that appeared in American newspapers in the late 1780s to argue that the Constitution should be adopted. Brookhiser has given a good account of Hamilton's life and I highly recommend it.

Interestingly, one of the most affecting passages in the book comes not in discussing Hamilton, but Hamilton's mentor, George Washington. Brookhiser quotes a letter by Congressman Fisher Ames regarding Washington's demeanor as the first president delivered his first Inaugural Address:

"...his aspect grave, almost to sadness; his modesty, actually shaking; his voice deep, a little tremulous, and so low as to call for close attention."

Like all good leaders--and I agree with historian Garry Wills' assessment that Washington was the greatest political leader in human history--Washington was a good actor. But I don't believe that the performance that Ames described was an act. Washington had tasted enough of applause to know how meaningless it ultimately is and how in the end, we are called to do our best no matter what the crowds may think of us. Washington was genuinely humbled by the unprecedented task he was taking on, the presidency of a republic that, if he did his job right and built a strong foundation for the American future, would require him to voluntarily give up absolute political power for the second time in his life.

It isn't easy to walk away from being in control! The despot Saddam Hussein ultimately had power wrested from him. Now, like Washington before them, American leaders must demonstrate that they can walk away from power as our national government prepares to turn Iraq over to a duly-constituted Iraqi government. Negotiating the landmines of foolish self-will and deep resentments of America that exist in the Middle East and throughout the world will require great wisdom (not to mention great selflessness) on the part of American leadership.

Fortunately, there is a place where our leaders--and all of us--can go for wisdom and anything else we may need to do and be our best. "If you don't know what you're doing," the New Testament book of James says, "pray to the Father. He loves to help. You'll get His help, and won't be condescended to when you ask for it. Ask boldly, believingly, without a second thought." (James 1, as translated in The Message by Eugene Peterson.)