Many Americans — including federal workers, state workers in Washington, and students — will enjoy a holiday today.
Today is Presidents’ Day in Washington state. Elsewhere, it might by President’s Day (note the apostrophe) or Washington’s Birthday. It might or might not include recognition for both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. But while the name and the placing of an apostrophe is insignificant, the occasion provides an opportunity to examine the legacy of the United States’ first president.
In addition to guiding the nascent nation to victory in the Revolutionary War and then serving eight years in its highest office, Washington provided an important template for the 226 years that have followed his presidency.
Working under the original iteration of the U.S. Constitution, Washington was not bound by a two-term limit on the presidency. That was not added until the 22nd Amendment was ratified in 1951, shortly after Franklin Delano Roosevelt had served more than 12 years as the only president elected to more than two four-year terms.
In stepping down after eight years, Washington made clear that the presidency was not a lifetime appointment. His farewell address, written in part by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, is considered a defining document of the American experiment. And it provides lessons that resonate today.
Early in the 7,641-word address, Washington urges Americans to put aside their sectional interests for the benefit of the union.
“You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together,” he declares. “The independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint counsels, and joint efforts, of common dangers, sufferings, and successes. … Your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty … the love of the one ought to endear you to the preservation of the other.”
In a passage that now seems particularly prescient, Washington warns about the development of competing political parties. He feared it would create a “spirit of revenge,” and enable the rise of “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men” who would “usurp for themselves the reins of government; destroying afterwards the very engines, which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”
He adds: “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.”
Given that process, Washington warns, the nation would be vulnerable to “foreign influence and corruption.”
Washington’s decision to not a seek a third term in office was momentous. The United States was still new and fragile, a loosely linked collection of states trying to forge lasting bonds. And despite fighting to be free from a monarchy, the framers of the U.S. Constitution had provided inadequate provisions to prevent a lifelong ruler.
Under those conditions, Washington appeals for unity: “The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity must always exalt the just pride of patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations.”
More than two centuries later, factionalism is rampant, leaders have been lifted to unjust dominion, and the meaning of patriotism is often twisted beyond recognition. But Washington’s words continue to reverberate on this Presidents’ Day.
