George Washington: Leadership Through Eagerness to Relinquish Power w/ Jeffry Morrison

0:00 the the founders were pretty convinced the term limits were important even annual elections in some cases some of them said things like where annual elections end their tyranny begins um I’m not necessarily saying that today but my point is if you have public servants who are really that and and

0:21 are anxious to get back to private life and let somebody else have the reins for a while and to have as Aristotle said a nation of people who can rule and be ruled in turn there’s no better example of that than George Washington and a man who could have been King if he had chosen or could have been a military dictator if he had chosen

0:42 [Music] hi this is Tony Williams Senior fellow at Bri and I want to welcome you to another episode of scholar talks for this episode I’m honored to have on my friend and Scholar Jeff Morrison who’s going to discuss George Washington based

1:03 upon his book the political philosophy of George Washington now The Guiding question for this series is what core contribution did this founder make to Liberty and self-governance Dr Jeffrey Morrison is Professor of American studies at Christopher Newport University in Newport News Virginia and

1:25 director of academics at the James Madison Foundation he has published as author editor five books on American political culture including the political philosophy of George Washington and an excellent book on John Witherspoon and the founding of the American Republic Jeff I want to thank you very much for joining us well Tony my thanks to you

1:48 and to Bri I’m delighted to be back doing another Bri event and uh as you mentioned but my good friend so thank you for your generosity and having me on great uh yeah the political philosophy of George Washington it’s part of a series of books by the Johns Hopkins University press a great series including several other the political

2:09 philosophy of several other founders now I really like to say uh you know it’s really I I read dozens of books on Washington of course I’ve written on Washington and Hamilton with Stephen not our mutual friend and so I’ve read dozens books but Jeff you’ve really written one of the best books on Washington certainly the best

2:30 on this political philosophy um it’s a it’s a compelling read but also uh scholarly and thoughtful and in its approach to uh Washington’s political philosophy but also the philosophy of the founding uh and you do all of that 180 pages I mean and ready I really have to compliment you it’s really a remarkable achievement uh just

2:52 a great book well thank you very much it was a labor of love it took about five years between the research and the writing and editing ruthless editing and so um I’m glad to know that it’s at least readable uh so thank you for that thank you very much so very much so so you are you in the book right up front uh that

3:12 the American founding in Washington himself embody the principles uh sort of a tripart uh series of principles one is classical republicanism two is British liberalism coming out of the Enlightenment uh and then also Protestant Christianity so so what are these principles and how do these

3:33 Traditions shape these principles uh for Washington and and the founding yeah I think that uh they are one way to look at them is and I have a little metaphor that I use and it’s a little hackneyed perhaps but uh that they that these are the three headwaters of of the mainstream of of early American

3:55 constitutionalism political thought and culture and what are those you know Great Rivers have have great Headwaters and the the Missouri River for example is one uh which has three Headwaters that flow into it and and make that River make that single River and they were named by the Lewis and Clark expedition the Madison and the Gallatin

4:18 and the Jefferson three Republican figures uh who had sponsored indeed that that uh that core of Discovery so I think the American founding is like that the mainstream we use that word a lot don’t we so and so it’s in the mainstream or they’re out of the mainstream so I think the the mainstream of early American institutionalism was

4:41 created and fed by those three sources of political culture of ideas and and they are as you mentioned classical republicanism that means ancient Greece and Rome primarily more Rome than Greece I would say but both of them and then the enlightenment as you

5:01 mentioned also and and particularly the the British Enlightenment by which we mean Great Britain and Scotland we should not forget the Scottish Enlightenment it’s a very very influential and important uh transatlantic uh source of ideas and culture and so forth and then the third which tends frankly to be left out of a

5:24 number of treatments is uh judeo-christianity in general I think Protestant Christianity in particular simply because upwards of 90 percent you know historians uh disagree about this a little bit but at the time of the American founding probably 90 some percent of Americans were not only

5:45 Protestant but Protestants of a certain stripe uh calvinistic uh uh Jonathan Edwards is um congregationalists in New England or where the Presbyterians in the middle colonies and and the upper South and so forth but George Washington I I think embodied all three of those if you will

6:09 um cultural Headwaters I know I’m mixing my metaphors a little bit but uh I I let’s switch it let’s let’s use a maybe a more appropriate metaphor Washington was a great actor and I don’t mean that he was merely putting on you know pretending to be somebody or something he wasn’t but he

6:31 enjoyed going to the theater uh he was very he designed his own uniforms for example egos Ferry uh and a very astute political actor not a phony but he knew he knew that people were looking at him watching him see the world was watching him and so he played these three roles

6:52 classical Republican Enlightenment liberal nominally Protestant Christian member of the Anglican church or what later becomes the Protestant Episcopal church after the American Revolution he played those roles in public and in his private life and I think he would he played them

7:14 like a consummate actor once again I want everybody to know I’m not accusing him of being a phony or you know being one person in private and another person in public he grew into those roles that that he adopted and partly he was a sort of naturally a classical Republican

7:35 what does that mean well we we tend to equate classical republicanism with a range of Civic virtues like moderation and above all disinterestedness this is a big difference from our our kind of contemporary political situation

7:55 isn’t it um Washington protested and I think genuinely I don’t want that I don’t want to be president of the United States uh I would just rather After the Revolution I would rather go back to my farm at Mount Vernon and and breed mules and and work

8:16 on crop rotation and he was he really was agrarian by nature and he claimed to be and I believe genuinely was disinterested in political power at least at least later in his career and so there were famous Romans who were like that who embodied those Civic

8:37 virtues uh Chief among them was a figure our audience probably heard of Cincinnatus uh the the historical figure but who took on kind of legendary proportions a a general who had retired himself to his farm outside this this Center the urban center of Rome and was

8:57 called from that farm back into service of of the Republic and Washington modeled his career on people like that but I want to stress it was natural to him as well it can’t became sort of second nature so that’s that’s one way that he embodied one of those cultural Avenues and and uh

9:18 in the interest of time maybe let’s move to the Protestant Christian one Washington uh always remained in the Anglican church for the Episcopal Church and in fact he held uh offices in that church he was what was called a vestryman I guess today still called the restroom investigate person um and that meant he had additional

9:41 roles to play and this isn’t a time when the church did a lot of things that that the government now does our local State national government does poor relief and Welfare and things like that well the church did that in the 1700s and so Washington was active in his church as

10:04 an Anglican as a later in his Episcopalian and he never ever unlike some of these other founders like Jefferson for example or Benjamin Franklin Jefferson primarily he never ever wants in public or in private um talked down Christianity or

10:25 Christians or the clergy you know Jefferson would snipe at them privately and and whatnot but Washington never never always respectful um and this I think he understood the great power of religion in America and and that leads us maybe to the third of those three Headwaters and that is The

10:48 Enlightenment you know the enlightenment we tend to use the that definite article the enlightenment but the fact of the matter is that virtually every year Western European nation or European nation period had its own Enlightenment and they were very different from one another our American Enlightenment Embrace this religion

11:10 and indeed all Roman Catholics Protestants Jews and Washington uh understood the nature of the American Enlightenment and embodied it and as president he wrote letters famous letters too Jewish synagogues and to Roman Catholic uh what do you call them Tony parishes

11:31 yes this month my Protestant ignorance coming out there Catholic parishes and to um uh various to baptist uh congregations assuring these religious minorities that the new national government that he was heading presiding over was not bigoted it was not going to give

11:54 preferential treatment in fact it was not anti-religion it was pro-religion so in all of these ways I think Washington played these roles with consummate skill and that’s that’s kind of in a nutshell one aspect of his career that made him so successful as a president and political figure right and so how does he support these

12:16 principles how does he support the creation of of the American constitutional order the American Republic uh you know as throughout a long career I mean he was a general Statesman how does he uh really embody those and help create that order well the first thing to re to re-emphasize is that he’s reluctant uh

12:38 he did not want to be president he did not want to go to what we call the Constitutional Convention uh James Madison had to work Lobby him really hard to get him to commit um After the Revolution Washington thought he was done and wanted to be done with a public life with a public

13:00 career just wanted to be as he said a scientific farmer that’s what he wanted to do um but he’s so he’s almost dragged uh back into public life and so the first thing that he does well there are a couple little preliminaries as you well know Tony you’ve written about

13:20 Washington in Washington and Hamilton and their relationship so well um there are a couple of sort of dry runs of a constitutional convention if you will one of them is held at his home it’s called the Mount Vernon conference and it’s um it brings together foreign Virginians and marylanders who

13:43 are fighting over navigation rights to the Potomac and um and there’s something called the Annapolis convention that precedes that but that Mount Vernon conference he insistes is to be held on his property in his home and he’s trying to bring these disparate groups together and

14:04 that’s really what Washington has a genius for he’s not overtly politicized like we think of today you know our parties today are almost weaponized to use a word that’s probably overused right now but um Washington’s always trying to bring Americans

14:25 together Americans of different political philosophies and um predilections that that Mount Vernon conference he does and then um this Federal convention Constitutional Convention that’s recommended by the by the Confederation

14:46 Congress and uh he doesn’t want to go he’s already committed to go to the society a society of the Cincinnati meeting in Philadelphia at that same time this is a hereditary Society of revolutionary officers and it still exists today there’s a society of Cincinnati uh

15:07 you’ve probably been there Tony to their to their headquarters or walked by it to write their Dupont Circle in Washington D.C but uh that’s what that’s all he was interested in doing okay I’ll I’ll go to that Gathering and then he was sort of talked out of that by Jefferson and others who said this looks a little too aristocratic you

15:27 know to hereditary and it wasn’t that many years ago we fought a revolution against that sort of thing so it it would appear it he feared it would appear hypocritical of him to have turned that down but then to accept this delegation to a constitutional committee

15:48 so it’s very reluctant to do it he doesn’t want to expose his reputation to um to what possible criticism if the thing goes south or if it creates a bad government a worse form of government than than they had under the Articles of Confederation our first Constitution by the way I think

16:09 so he’s reluctant but he goes anyway and he’s he’s immediately elected president of that Gathering and he hardly talks it all as president but he lends moral Authority and he lays down some very strict rules you’re not to talk outside of uh of this

16:31 what we call Independence Hall today right you go back to your boarding house or wherever don’t let people know what’s going on um there he imposes a strict Code of Silence and when you write home don’t write about the substance of our debates you can tell the family how you’re doing it what not you miss them ask of it but

16:52 don’t you you know don’t you be letting this out he’s the first elected head of a truly Republican government in the history of the world he doesn’t have any precedence to go on he has to pretty much invent single-handedly and executive departments and figure out what kind of

17:14 rituals to in which to engage or how to comport himself in public and all sorts of things and what how to interpret the Constitution yeah is it does he as the president in Article 2 does he have broad powers or very narrowly

17:35 um uh enumerated that is to number powers or strictly delegated powers and Kenny well can he issue a neutrality proclamation which he ends up doing you know for example things like that so very skillful as president so if I may Tony I know I’ve been going on a little bit

17:56 here but uh I think one of the things I try to do in this book is to is to dispel some myths about Washington and one of the myths is that he was a great General but uh not the not the brightest bulb amongst the founders and so he needed

18:18 younger smarter men around him to do his thinking for him and write his speeches and and do that uh you know I think that I think the truth is exactly opposite I think we have it completely upside down Washington was a mediocre at best tactician he became a good strategist

18:39 militarily that is he he understood after a while after some painful lessons and and some terrible blunders he made as as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army he he figured out a strategy which was political military social that’s what

19:01 strategy that’s what a great strategist really does but as a tactician he made terrible blunders in a lot of these battles lost maybe 95 90 85 90 percent of his strength in the those disastrous New York campaigns early and he kept wanting to have a full-scale engagement with the British troops like

19:23 you know like European tactics and that that was just suicidal it’s crazy so um but he turns out to be a fantastically clever trued uh politically astute he has what the Greeks called um a very high practical intelligence I

19:45 believe phronesis is the Greek word but whatever that Greek word is he’s got it he’s got it and um his presidential successors like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson even very smart in a book learning sense you know but they make some terrible mistakes as president that Washington never made you

20:06 know you pay a lot more attention you give a lot more Credence to Washington as a political thinker um you know what was the significance of his political thought yeah so it’s a little highfalutin isn’t it that title the political philosophy of George Washington and as you as you know it it is a book in a series and so

20:29 that title was um sort of dictated by the Johns Hopkins press and I’m very grateful to have published the book with Inland and was happy to work within this framework that they that they assigned me but um political thought might be a little more

20:50 down to earth and appropriate for Washington so I’m not saying he was a philosopher in the sense that uh the baron de Montes skier in France was a philosopher or you know Hugo gross this was a philosopher in some of these or Aristotle was a philosopher

21:11 um but but what I do insist on is that Washington had a coherent political theory about what America should be what the government should look like what were what Civic virtues were necessary for Americans to practice for a novel

21:32 Republic like ours to survive and indeed Thrive and these covered domestic affairs that covered Foreign Affairs which says we need to take advantage of our geopolitical situation the Geo part the geographical part we are separated

21:52 from Europe by roughly 3 000 miles ocean we have this benevolent moat around us and what we need to do is is to be rigorous in uh in fulfilling any existing treaties we might have but never ever entangling ourselves

22:15 through alliances in European affairs what do those Europeans do they fight these incessant Wars which go back a thousands you know hostilities that go back in some cases thousands of years uh it’s many hundreds of years we must not become entangled so he says

22:36 we’re not to have any permanent alliances with other nations the phrase entangling alliances is actually Jefferson’s and they often get confused in the public mind but sometimes it’s referred to Washington’s Theory as isolationist right that the U.S is to be isolated from the West the

22:57 rest of the world and there there’s some truth to that but but I think neutral is a is a better word but let’s not get entangled you know those Europeans they fight 30 years wars and hundreds you know there’s a war called The Hundreds Years War uh actually it lasted 107 years but they’re Wars of religion right

23:17 there are Wars based on ethnicity there are Wars between incessant Wars between the English and the French right point is that that the US is a very very little nation-state with no money and no Armed Forces really no Navy and how are we going to survive how are we going to grow

23:37 how are we going to become an Empire Washington used that word empire Jefferson used an empire for Liberty how are we going to do that we’re going to do it by staying out of all that mess in Europe and not not making permanent alliances until until such time as we have grown up

23:59 financially militarily maybe geographically maybe we’ve spread and obtained more territory and economy then we’ll be ready and Washington says um in his farewell address and other places you know then we’ll be able to dictate whether it’ll be war or peace with us and um I think the U.S the the Great

24:19 Seal of the U.S portrays this really nicely and the U.S adheres to that more or less every president from George Washington to Franklin Roosevelt maybe maybe Harry Truman adheres to that and and if I again can be a little crude dumb people don’t think up

24:40 strategies and policies that last for a century and a half and and stand Us in good stead like that so there’s one one I think key example of Mount Washington embodies these and flushes them out and puts us on the right course steers us a middle course he was always trying to do

25:00 that final question uh in a nutshell uh during this lifetime Service as we’ve asked uh all the other guests in this series what are what’s the most important way that uh Washington this founder Advanced Liberty and self-permanence well it’s a career that’s almost 50 years in in the public

25:21 eye so that’s a tough question you’ve posed in Newtonian I presume positive your other guests too um if I had to pick one thing I’ll start with one thing and then if you’ll let me kind of wease the weasel out of it and give it several things I’m happy to do it but if I had to pick one thing and one alone

25:42 it is what he didn’t do curiously he didn’t stay on past his time he didn’t cling to power he didn’t want to become a professional career-long politician which we see don’t we we see Senators 30 40 years 50 years in the U.S Senate

26:04 their entire lives are taken up with politics Washington uh Gary Wills whose writing I admire greatly the classicist and historian was at Northwestern University for for years um said that Washington was a virtuoso of resignations that’s a great

26:25 phrase he’s always stepping down he’s always giving power back right he’s given on two occasions during the American Revolution he has given voted quasi-dictatorial Powers by the Continental Congress and unlike Julius Caesar for example who is his historical anti-type Washington

26:46 wields those with a pretty light hand as soon as that Revolution is over and that treaty is signed what does Washington do he resigns he gives his sword back symbolically resigns his commission and he makes a beeline for Mount Vernon after he resigns at the State House in Annapolis Maryland a building you can still visit to this day it’s the oldest

27:07 continuously used state capital in the U.S and um so he resigns that he uh two years into his presidency Tony two years into the first term he wants to step down from the presidency and and he’s convinced to serve out his first term and then he wants to retire

27:29 and it takes the tag team of Jefferson and Hamilton both to convince him to stand for a second term which he in which he is again unanimously elected and then when that second term is done he cannot wait to get out of that office and he refuses to stand for a third term so he

27:49 sets this pattern of giving power back I think sadly our politicians today don’t they don’t pattern themselves after Washington um they want to hold on as long as they can so that would be the single greatest contribution and how do you protect Liberty to try to answer your question

28:12 well the the founders were pretty convinced the term limits were important even annual elections in some cases some of them said things like where annual elections end their tyranny begins um I’m not necessarily saying that today but my point is if you have public servants who are really that and and

28:34 are anxious to get back to private life and let somebody else have the reins for a while and to have as Aristotle said a nation of people who can rule and be ruled in turn there’s no better example of that than George Washington than to a man who could have been King if he had chosen or could have been a military dictator if he had chosen

28:54 but decline in fact was angry that anybody should suggest such a thing to him it offended his sense of dignitas you know and um disinterestedness so that’s probably the greatest contribution if I can right well Jeff Morrison I want to thank you

29:14 very much for joining us been my pleasure and privilege thank you very much Tony thank you and thank you all for joining us on this episode of scholar talks please check out our other interviews in this series on the American Founders including Jay cost on James Madison Jonathan Dunn hartog on John Jay Mark David Hall on Roger Sherman and Thomas Kidd on Thomas

29:36 Jefferson and check out Bri’s resources on the family including our life liberty in the pursuit of happiness resource and the updated being an American thank you