Person or Presidency
Imperfect Union October 2021
One Last Time, Hamilton: The Musical
September 19 was the 225th anniversary of George Washington’s Farewell Address. I’ve presented at a few events on the subject in the last few weeks, so it’s been on my mind. You might have read it in your 8th grade history class, but if it’s been a while, I recommend revisiting it. There are so many fascinating aspects of the address—how it was created, the political savvy contained in the text, the prescient warnings for future generations, what it represented as a political precedent, and its staying power in the American memory—and I could write about all of them (and in fact wrote about several in the first chapter of my work-in-progress book!). But for today’s essay, I wanted to share a few thoughts inspired by my conversations with teachers this week as part of a Texas Humanities Teacher Institute.
As many of you probably know, I’m a big fan of Hamilton: The Musical. The song “One Last Time” is particularly special. It’s a beautiful piece of music and the performance of Christopher Jackson is just *chef’s kiss*. But one line always catches my attention. Washington sings that he had to teach the American people “how to say goodbye.”
While I’m not sure if the real Washington ever said those words, he was definitely thinking it. And both the musical and historic versions were right. Leaving office, turning down power, and retiring while still in control of your faculties was a radical idea. It was also a bit of a scary one for an American public that only knew one president. They didn’t know how to conduct national elections to replace Washington. They didn’t know how to conduct a transfer of power. They didn’t know how to visualize a new person in high office. Those practices, which are now central to our ideas of democracy, had to be learned and fostered over time.
By walking away while he was still alive, Washington facilitated this process, gave his stamp of approval, and lent his legitimacy to the successors that followed him. He also ensured that the American people could plan for an election, rather than throwing the system into chaos because of an untimely or unpredictable death.
Washington also emphasized that the office was bigger than one person. This point is the one that I’d like to meditate on for a bit. I will argue until I am blue in the face that there was no other person that could have been the first president. Washington was the only person with enough of a national reputation (other than Ben Franklin but he was too old by 1789) and the only person that could hold all the pieces of the country together from the beginning. But by retiring, he was demonstrating that his singular stature was no longer required. The office was on firm footing and was now bigger than his unique persona.
That may or may not have been the case (as John Adams would find out), but I’d argue that Washington’s relinquishing of power made it so. Most of Washington’s contemporaries—Hamilton, Madison, even Jefferson—thought the country still needed him to fill the role. Without Washington, they were convinced the federal government, and the nation if they were being honest, would crumble into civil war or hostile factions. He disagreed and insisted that the country figure it out.
So why does that matter today? Well, our institutions and the powerful offices are supposed to be bigger than one person. But I’m not so sure that’s true. Many of the highest offices, including the Speaker of the House, the Senate Majority Leader, Supreme Court justices, and the president, maybe especially the president, differ so much depending on who holds power.
For example, one of my side projects is to cohost The Past, The Promise, The Presidency (a podcast I produce with the Center for Presidential History). This season we are exploring presidential crises and it’s remarkable how much the president’s role in a crisis is determined by who is in the seat and what they think about executive power. For example, in the 1850s, there are a series of truly dismal presidents (Pierce and Buchanan especially) who do absolutely nothing when faced with increasing violence and a looming Civil War. On the other hand, later in the season we will release episodes on Ulysses S. Grant and Theodore Roosevelt. They could have just shrugged their shoulders when crises landed on their plates. Instead, they marshalled the full weight of the federal government and their personal power to tackle the problems of their administration.
One of the most confounding “what ifs” in history further highlights the importance of the person in high office. What if John Wilkes Booth hadn’t assassinated Abraham Lincoln? How might have Lincoln handled reconstructing the nation? Certainly, his successor, Andrew Johnson, was a lesser choice in every way. But would Lincoln have struggled as well? Or would civil rights for African Americans in the South survived beyond the 1880s?
With those examples in mind, I’m prepared to argue that the person matters a great deal. With one important caveat. The success of the office might depend on who is in it, but the institution must survive beyond the one person. That’s really what Washington meant. He probably could have predicted that there would be terrible presidents. But presidents don’t get to tear down the executive branch or refuse to leave just because they lose. The office is supposed to exist far beyond one man’s lifespan. That’s the idea at the heart of a democracy. A monarchy is defined by familial and personal rule. A democracy or a republic is defined by the regular, peaceful turnover of power through election.
That reminder is one that applies to so many of our political systems today. So many political leaders (and Supreme Court justices too) think that only they can wield the power and keep the institution afloat. Perhaps that’s just political ego run amok. But if they are right, if it’s true that the entire experiment would collapse without one person, then our democracy is already lost.
I sure hope not. I hope Washington was right all these years later. I hope our institutions can withstand a tumultuous period of intense polarization and attempts to undermine our core democratic principles. I’m going to keep writing about it, talking about these challenges, and voting for candidates who support our democracy. Join me.
(No seriously, if you live in Virginia, we have an extremely important election coming up. You need to vote. Learn more here.)