On this Presidents’ Day in America, I thought I would pass along this reminder as to what is possible from the ONE person in this great experiment in Constitutional Democracy who we ALL evaluate for our vote. We know who will not make this list, as even the modestly competent POTUS’es generally recognized that the office was greater than themselves. No one has ever exhibited such a selfless devotion to country over himself and over party than our very first, George Washington. How sad it is to see our nation in the vice-grip of people who place power over patriotism.
Here are the words of President Washington, in his Farewell Address. I am taking the liberty of editing, so that the meaning to the modern ear is clear).
Washington’s Farewell Address, September 19, 1796, was not orally delivered, but instead was contained in a newspaper article in the Philadelphia Daily American Advertiser. This was the landmark message by George Washington that he would not run for a third term; a decision that set the standard for what has become known as the orderly and peaceful transition of power. But perhaps just as important was Washington’s warning about “factions;” an 18th Century word that today we would call the political party.
Friends and Fellow-Citizens:
Election Day is coming and thus the time for you to decide for whom to vote, for whom you want to grant that important trust. This is therefore the time that I must inform you that I decline to be considered for another term as your President… It is not that I have less zeal for your future interests. I do not lack for grateful respect for your past kindness. Instead, my decision reflects my embrace of both. I am persuaded that although many would be happy for me to stay on, in the present circumstances of our country, most of you will not disapprove my determination to retire.
[after some further words looking to the past and to his personal future, George Washington offered his “disinterested warnings of a parting friend”]:
Unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so; for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad, of your safety, of your prosperity, of that very liberty which you so highly prize.
But how easy it is to anticipate that from different causes and from different quarters, there will be those who will seek to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national Union to your collective and individual happiness…
With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together. The independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint councils and joint efforts—of common dangers, sufferings, and successes.
You have improved upon [the Articles of Confederation] by the adoption of a Constitution of government better calculated than your former for an intimate Union and for the efficacious management of your common concerns. This government, the offspring of our own choice uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support.
But always remember that a Constitution which at any time exists, until changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.
All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force—to put in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party; often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common councils and modified by mutual interests. they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.
That was President George Washington. He set the standard and he saw that his young United States of America would rarely avoid the fragility of its cause, especially if its people and its leaders slip into factions and away from unity. Washington worried about “cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men…”
I continue to pray that my fellow citizens will find it within themselves to see that decency and humility and not narcissism, the hallmarks about which Washington spoke, will ultimately save our Union.