The Greatest Exit, How George Washington Created America
I am reading The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding by Joseph J. Ellis and a passage about George Washington struck me, because it contrasts so sharply with the current President, Donald Trump, who recently boasted of his plans to run for a third term in 2028, which the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not allow. George Washington was a man who surrendered power for the good of the country. Mr. Trump is not the same kind of leader.
George Washington was not a perfect man. He owned slaves and undoubtedly understood the tragic irony of fighting for liberty while simultaneously denying it to enslaved African-Americans. After the war for independence was over, Washington petitioned for the return of slaves who escaped Mount Vernon and fought for the British. Washington sought to “obtain them again.” But after a meeting on the matter with the British General Guy Carleton who told Washington the people who escaped had already been evacuated and could not be returned, Washington gave up the petition, not wanting his ultimate legacy to be that of a small-minded slaveowner.
The framers of the Constitution did not want there to be term-limits in the presidency (or in Congress … or in the Supreme Court!). For Congress and the President, the thinking was that term-limits would remove the incentive for an elected representative to seek approval from the community for their actions. We call this the lame-duck problem today, where a second-term president is no longer required to consider his own future electoral chances and starts doing things contrary to his party’s short-term political interests and/or the people and their representatives stop looking to the president for leadership, since everyone knows he’ll be gone from office soon and cannot come back. The people move on from lame ducks; that’s what happens with term-limits, it forces people to look ahead to the next thing.
But before the 22nd Amendment existed to limit a President to only two terms in office, George Washington established a norm kept by every American president until F.D.R. in the 20th century, where a U.S. President only served two terms at most as a matter of gentlemanly behavior. Presidents are not kings and having the same executive for longer than eight years just looks bad for the idea of elected representation. There is a saying in the law, the appearance of impropriety is as bad as impropriety itself. If someone looks like a king, even if they in truth are not a king, it still looks bad.
Washington set a precedent for walking away from power after the American Revolution. At this point in time in history, Washington was a legendary figure due to his leadership in the war for independence. History would suggest that a man with the world in his hands would take over and attempt to remake society in his own image, the same way, as Ellis puts it, men like “Napoleon, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, and a host of African dictators” have tried to do.
On December 23, 1783, Washington retired from public life. He said: “Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the greater theater of action, and bidding farewell to the august body under whom I have long acted, I offer here my commission and take leave of all the employment of public life.” Ellis calls this “the greatest exit, and perhaps the most consequential moment, in American history.” Thomas Jefferson was awed by Washington’s “moderation and character” and said Washington “probably prevented the revolution from being closed as most others have been, by a subversion of the liberty it was intended to establish.”
On September 19, 1796, Washington’s farewell address was printed in a Philadelphia newspaper, the Daily American Advertiser. Washington did not deliver his farewell address publicly. According to Ellis, Washington created “a new definition of political leadership, rooted in the ability to surrender rather than exercise power.” And he did so in the fashion of his time, which elevated the written word above in person oration and which looked down on populist appeals.
A leader can either try to unite people or divide them. President Washington argued in his farewell address that unity is the American way: “Citizens by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. 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.”
Washington was not a perfect man, but he was a prudent leader. And his willingness to put his country above his own interests gave America a chance to succeed as a republic. In ancient Athens, Socrates asked whether it was possible for natural right to become political right. In the American founding, Washington proved that such a government could in fact exist in real life, as long as there are powerful leaders willing to put universal principles above private profit and their country before their party.