His Excellency
Joseph J. Ellis, 2004

One of my students told me that since I drive so much (anywhere from 100-300 miles a day during the peak of tutoring season) I should get some audiobooks — her commute to school is an hour each way and apparently this is how she passes the time. So I got the 13-CD audiobook version of this biography of George Washington; I got through it in about four days. I have now learned why I am such a slow reader! The narrator would say something, and while I was thinking about it he'd just keep on going and I'd miss the next several sentences and have to rewind. So I don't know if I'm going to be able to keep going with the audiobooks. I guess I could just pause every few sentences, but that wouldn't do anything about the way the narrator put on this horrible whiny voice every time the book quoted Thomas Jefferson.

The stated purpose of this biography is to explore Washington's personality. In order to do this, Ellis sifts through the historical record, presents what he considers the most salient moments of Washington's life in this regard, and weighs in on them. I am no historian and cannot present an alternate selection of facts. But, using Ellis's selection, I found that I came to a slightly different assessment of Washington than Ellis did.

It's fitting that Washington is on the one-dollar bill, because Ayn Rand adopted the dollar sign as her personal symbol and Washington comes off in this biography as the hero of an Ayn Rand novel. Among all the highfalutin thinkers of the Revolutionary period, Washington stands apart as a sort of machine programmed to relentlessly seek out personal success. With little education and a family name with little prestige, Washington joined the military in search of the social advancement that came with an officer's commission; what eventually drove him away was neither fear of death (he distinguished himself for his courage under enemy fire) nor revulsion at the horrors of war (he presided over the massacre that helped to kick off the French and Indian War) but the prospect of a demotion from colonel to captain. Though in love with Sally Fairfax, when the opportunity came along to marry millionaire widow Martha Custis, Washington went for the money. He went on surveying expeditions in the Ohio Country and claimed what he called "the cream of the country" for himself, responding to those who complained much in the manner of The Girl Who Owned a City.

What led Washington to turn against Britain was not any abstract set of ideals but rather personal experience with the mercantile system, which he felt was keeping him from expanding his fortune as much as he might have liked. The tobacco he sent to Britain never fetched the price he wanted, and the goods he received in return were too expensive and of shoddy quality. And so, as recommended by Ayn Rand acolyte Steve Ditko, he tried to go his own way, opting out of the huge centralized economy by switching to wheat to sell locally. In a sense, this was a progressive step — decentralization and community-based economics are key planks of the Green Party platform — but Washington wasn't trying to create "a vibrant and sustainable economic system," merely one that wasn't personally disadvantageous. His involvement with the colonial resistance was prompted by the British imposition of taxes that cut into his bottom line. The entire American Revolution, in fact, was essentially a tax revolt; throw in the colonists' resentment of the British troops stationed on American soil, and the whole affair takes on such a libertarian bent that it comes off like the premise for a Prometheus Award nominee.

Just one problem: Washington, named commander of the Continental Army, soon discovered that libertarian ideals sound awesome when you're a rich planter trying to fill your coffers but are a disaster when you're trying to build a country or win a war. As related by Ellis, the war was an ongoing conversation along these lines: Washington: "We need a professional standing army, and the states must raise money to pay the troops"; libertarian-dominated Continental Congress: "Sorry, but those things are precisely what we're fighting against. You will have to make do with volunteers who pay their own way!" One of the defining characteristics of libertarians is that they overstate the extent to which our decisions are a matter of free choice; when The Girl Who Owned a City says, "It's a free choice whether to stay with me and do as I say or head out on your own and starve to death," they happily nod and agree that, yep, that's a free choice all right! But Washington knew full well that very few people sign up for the military and put their lives at risk when they've got a panoply of other attractive options. He'd only joined up in search of a rank, and most of the well-to-do who joined the Continental Army demanded to be made generals. The common soldiers? Most of them didn't even have shoes. They'd signed up because at least in the army they gave you horses to eat.

So Washington was pretty quickly disabused of any libertarian sentiments he may have harbored. As far as he was concerned, most of his fellow revolutionaries were (ahem) overgeneralizing. Their measure of a bad government was how much it exploited people. His measure of a bad government was how much it exploited George Washington. That's a glib way of putting it, but it's hard to make a case that Washington objected to the existence of disadvantaged classes: he was a slaveowner, after all, and the first President General of the Society of the Cincinnati, an attempt to establish a hereditary aristocracy in America. He merely objected to being a member of a disadvantaged class. Under British rule, all American colonists were a disadvantaged class, so he fought to overthrow it. But the lesson he took away from the war was that a strong, centralized American government would have to take the place of the British one. (He spoke of America as an "empire," not a republic.)

Why not become king, then? After all, the offer was out there. One of the strangest things about the career of George Washington is that he was acclaimed by one and all as almost a god among men on the basis of not a whole lot. He was given command of American forces ostensibly because of his military experience — which he reminded people of by showing up at the Second Continental Congress wearing his old uniform — but that experience consisted mainly of surrendering forts and leading retreats. Nor was his record during the Revolutionary War especially distinguished. Recapturing New Jersey at the end of 1776 was a decisive stroke, but the American victory at Saratoga occurred in his absence and was keyed by the volunteer militia he disdained. The standard narrative of the Revolutionary War is that the British tried to fight a standard European war with armies facing off in rigid formations, while the Americans used guerrilla tactics that obviated the British advantages in manpower and training. And so they did — but Washington hated this. He wanted to square off with the British, army to army. He was obsessed with the idea of taking New York, thinking it the key to ending the war; he was completely wrong, as the concluding battle came at Yorktown. And yet in the aftermath of the war Washington was hailed as the father and presumptive future monarch of his country. Why? It couldn't have been because of his performance, which was middling. He just happened to be the general of the winning side. And he was the general of the winning side, John Adams confessed, because when they were making the appointments he was the tallest guy in the room. It is so depressing to watch generation after generation of men cast about for an alpha male to kowtow to. If Gordon Liddy and Chris Matthews had been there they would've been scoping out his "manly characteristic" and trying to sniff his aftershave.

But Washington repudiated the movement to make him king, so if he was all about his own advancement, what gives? Based on the evidence Ellis presents, at the end of the war Washington realized that, as the conquering hero of his era, there was no one left on earth for him to advance past — he'd beaten the level. Henceforth he would be competing in the pages of the history books against the likes of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. By accepting monarchical power, even if he ruled wisely, he could at best rise into their ranks. To pass them in history's judgment, he had to add saintlike virtue to his résumé. So from this perspective, turning over his sword was the smart move. Based on his correspondence, the retired Washington was fixated on his place in history; time and time again he brings it up. And those writing to him soon twigged to the fact that appealing to his legacy was the best way to get him to do stuff — for instance, chairing the Constitutional Convention to overturn the libertarian fiasco that was the Articles of Confederation.

The men of ideas who surrounded Washington were full of theories about the ideal structure of government. Washington wasn't. His goal was that the United States, and consequently his fame as its leading founder, endure. That meant treading a middle course where executive power was concerned: too much and he — for it was a given that Washington would be the first chief executive — would be viewed as a tyrant and sully his reputation; too little and the country would dissolve into chaos and, inevitably, reconquest or dictatorship, erasing his accomplishments. But the country was still full of libertarians (Patrick Henry, to name one) afraid that the establishment of any sort of executive branch would inevitably lead to monarchy. Washington's role as president was to serve as a sort of human introductory offer — after all, no one could object to any office held by George Washington, and by the time he was gone, people would be used to the existence of the presidency. For eight years Washington played, to use a phrase applied to Ronald Reagan, "America's emcee," riding around on horses for the public while delegating the actual governing to his all-star cabinet. And so, in the end, he was successful. The United States survived its infancy, and Washington's name survived along with it. Over two hundred years later, he's still on the money of one of the most powerful nations on earth and its capital is named after him. The problem is that, since Washington was basically about Washington and little else, his fame is empty. People know his signifiers — his name, his face — but have almost nothing to connect them with except for made-up legends, cherry trees and such. So what's the point?

Besides, his reputation isn't all that great nowadays. I mean, the dude once held an opponent's wife's hand. In a jar of acid. At a party.

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