George Washington’s Political Genius with David O. Stewart | BRI Scholar Talks

0:00 he had a form of quiet leadership which i think could be quite firm in moments of crisis uh certainly in the middle of a battle or uh when he was dealing with the whiskey rebellion but was always courteous was always thoughtful and considerate and allowed people to

0:22 feel like they had been heard and you know we talk about that sometimes today but he didn’t have that the jargon we use but he understood that that was so important for his job [Music] hi this is tony williams senior fellow at the bill of rights institute and i

0:43 want to welcome you to another episode of scholar class uh for this episode we’re very honored to have scholar david stewart here who is going to discuss his brilliant new book george washington the political rise of america’s founding father and the guiding question for this conversation

1:03 is is really going to be how did george washington demonstrate uh you know a certain political genius in helping to lead the creation of the american republic and you know one of the reasons why i just really love this book is that it really dials into something not a

1:24 lot of scholars have talked about it were really original in terms of washington’s uh you know just political genius and and how that played out over the course of his life in terms of uh you know being in the house of burgesses and the continental congress a general a president the constitutional convention

1:45 really had to learn the arts of deliberation and uh you know how to lend his presence but also when to be silent when to speak how to deal with a lot of different interests and and how to navigate national politics as well as dealing with with state and local politicians as well

2:07 generals during the war so so he really shared a lot of political skills throughout his life and it’s all here in in this remarkable uh new biography so by way of introduction uh david o stewart is a best-selling historian whose excellent books include the summer of 1787 which i just happened to

2:28 have a copy also madison’s gifts five partnerships uh that built america uh american emperor wow erin burr and uh thomas jefferson uh and also it’s up there on the shelf somewhere uh a book on andrew johnson impeached so yes david i have the whole

2:50 collection i admire your library oh thank you at all yours so he’s won several awards including the washington writing award the history prize of the society of the cincinnati and the william h prescott award of the national society of colonial names of america david thank you very much for joining us well thanks so much for having me oh

3:11 it’s a pleasure well let’s jump right in my first question is on politics the subject of your book now washington has often seen shall we say as a as a demigod or or a man of marble kind of far removed from us uh and but we often forget as you point out in the book that he really had a lot of

3:34 practical political experience and maybe even expertise uh as a soldier as a statement as president so can you maybe just generally by way of introduction explain his political rise and why it’s significant well his rise was really fueled by a couple of things that i would highlight one is his

3:56 ambition he wanted to be an important person and to make a contribution to his community to his world and then his relentless willingness to engage in self-criticism and self-improvement he was the hardest working man of his generation um he exhausted people with how hard he

4:18 was willing to work and that included on working on himself and he as all of us try to do ultimately he figured out how to emphasize his strengths and de-emphasize his weaknesses um that takes a certain amount of intelligence to figure out which is which uh we can be wrong about

4:39 those so uh he uh he was awfully good at that and i found it fascinating that his early years he he wasn’t that good at it and and he got better and that was through experience and that was through this kind of self-improvement that i was uh i’ve been talking about great well

4:59 well yeah well let’s dive right into that early period uh and and you describe washington as a young man on the make right with certain ambitions uh who could be at times as you describe a little brash a little impatient uh but but he learned as you said self-improvement moderation a greater restraint and and as you

5:20 described in the book is during his time as sort of a rising planter statesman in virginia in the 1760s and 1770s so can you explain a little bit more on on how and and why this growth occurred yeah he he was as a very young man in his early 20s uh the senior military

5:42 figure in the uh colony of virginia and it was more responsibility and more power than he was ready to exercise well and he did annoy and ultimately alienate the people superior to him and uh when he leaves the service um he knows he messed it up and what you see then for the next 16

6:05 years which is a period often skipped over a bit in washington learning is he serves in the house of burgesses which is the colonial legislature he serves on the county court which has a judicial element but also has a big administrative element they you know figure out where the roads go they run the tobacco warehouses for

6:25 the export business a lot of practical stuff that to be honest washington was really good at and uh he also served on the parish vestry which is the the anglican church in virginia had uh governing responsibilities those experiences taught him a collegiality a consultative

6:47 style which he hadn’t had he’d as a younger man he’d sort of gone with his gut he pushed ahead when he should have thought about it and he developed a pattern of always wanting to hear what smart people thought about what should happen he would always make up his mind on his own he didn’t just do what he was told

7:09 but he if he had the time he would take it and get the smartest people he could find to tell him what they thought um and you know that’s just what we should all do actually um some of this i think as he got older um we all try to get a little smarter and a little slower as we get older uh but i i you know his

7:30 dedication to fixing his problems is impressive just one quick thing also he was not a very good speaker and oratory was a big deal in those years um and he had to figure out a way around that which he did partly by hard work um he just outworked everybody um and by mastering the talents he had

7:54 okay excellent and uh you know he had a lot to master in terms of politics commanding the continental army uh in in the republic a lot of different interests involved uh state local national politicians as we said what political challenges does he face during that revolutionary war and how

8:14 does he meet them successfully well you’re exactly right um he probably spends more time as gen commander-in-chief working on political issues than he does on military issues um there’s a real problem with legitimacy when you are leading an insurrection um who is who are you and you know

8:38 why are you there and he recognized that the legitimacy came from the consent of the people the participation of the people in choosing congress and choosing their state legislatures so he always deferred to the authority of congress the governors and the state legislatures but that meant he had to get along with him and he had to get them

8:59 to do what he wanted them to do which was not easy um and it was a hard time for everybody uh war is unpleasant um there was great impoverishment and loss through the country but he also had to manage these issues and they were as simple as reorganizing a supply

9:21 system which broke down in a period that i study in the book and he had to get congress to participate in that and he brought congress in to be part of the effort he had to resist a movement to replace him as commander-in-chief it’s called the conway cabal but there were three senior generals who tried to move

9:41 him out and he fed them off very effectively and then he’d had to get a an army on the field that would win um and he did that as well so getting the supplies together getting soldiers uh who would not desert which was a huge issue all took great

10:04 leadership and a great political sense uh and uh what was a real uh laboratory for him and and how to how to lead okay fantastic and and at the end of this war washington obviously very dramatically uh surrenders his commission to congress in

10:25 1783 uh and he really laid down that that amazing precedent of civilian control of the military and refuses to become you know a caesar a napoleon uh and he returns to mount vernon as he put it eloquently from the from the book of micah under his vine and fig tree right and yet he still stays really

10:47 deeply involved in politics as you point out uh and so so how does he become a leader of the nationalists uh you know why is he still staying involved in politics in the 1780s if he supposedly retired well ironically his resignation wins him the greatest political support of his life

11:08 because everybody figures well this guy’s not power mad we can trust him he’s willing to walk away from it and you know frankly that’s what you want um somebody who’s there to serve and is happy to go home when the time is over and he becomes when he first leaves the

11:28 army uh you know he writes these letters uh you know people are getting upset because the country really starts to fall apart uh and he writes back you know it’s not so bad you know we’re like young the country is like a young heir who’s come into his fortune too early and you know is gonna squander some of it

11:50 but we’ll come to our senses and after two or three years he decides no no actually we’re not coming to our senses and he begins to exercise leadership um behind the scenes uh he doesn’t run for office or anything like that but he is the visible symbol of the country at this point you

12:11 know it’s hard for us to realize these are colonies who didn’t have much to do with each other before the revolution we don’t have a lot of institutions congress is kind of a diplomatic body you know we’ve got representatives from each state um but it’s not really a nation uh and we don’t even have a money have

12:32 money they’re just basic stuff and washington is the symbol of the country and that is a tremendous power he recognizes the power of it and he uses that to to lead in his quiet way towards remaking the government

12:53 we had a very weak government at the time and he and many others became convinced that it would not survive and a stronger government was needed and that led to the constitutional convention right and that that’s the subject of my next question is is um what what role does washington play at the constitutional convention and then uh importantly in the uh

13:17 ratification debate that follows it’s a fascinating uh exercise to me because the convention goes on for four months there are wonderful speeches made by the smartest people in the country and washington doesn’t do any of that you know he presides over the hearings and he sort of calls balls and

13:37 strikes and calls on the next person and counts the votes um but everybody knows what he thinks he does cast votes so they can see what he’s voting for and he has written letters over time and any time you got a letter from george washington you showed it to all your friends um and so people knew the things he

13:58 cared about and it was very basic he cared that there be a national government that was supreme to the states he thought state government was fine but he needed a national government he thought there had to be an executive branch we didn’t have an executive office and things didn’t get done

14:20 and the third thing was and it’s again very basic stuff you have to have the power to tax because the national government didn’t have that and once you got those he wasn’t going to worry about the details um the ratification fight was essential and he he wrote a few letters

14:41 he followed it closely he made his commitment to the constitution clear and i very much doubt that if he had not been at the convention and if he had not backed the ratification of the constitution that we would have gotten a new government it just he was the force he he wasn’t noisy

15:02 about it but you know he had this unique position of being the man everyone trusted right i think it was uh james monroe and a few others who said his his uh you know reputation and and support of the document really carried it uh to ratification so yeah you’re in good company there uh and

15:23 so uh he becomes the the first president of course uh and it’s a big topic of course but but how does his acting as first president how does that show his sort of mastery of politics here is the the culmination of his public life

15:44 well he understands the public role he’s very good at it and his whole life he has understood that you know he’s he’s tall he’s got great presence he always has great clothes on he made sure he looked great um and he made a point of visiting every state in the union during his first couple of

16:04 years in office so everybody could see him uh but it was much more than that he built a cabinet out of diverse people uh you know it’s become the subject of broadway shows the fights between hamilton and jefferson in in the cabinet they were had very different views and washington

16:26 wanted to hear both sides and he wanted that inside his government and he it was a tremendous achievement to keep them both there as long as he did uh he had specific challenges that were gigantic dealing with the debt coming out of the uh the war uh it threatened to undermine

16:48 everything in the economy uh there was a the whiskey rebellion which was a tax revolt that went on for years and this and then staying out of the war in europe which many americans unwisely wanted to get into what you see in each uh episode and i try to trace in the book is he has

17:09 developed a fine sense of timing so especially say with the j treaty which was a treaty with britain that was very controversial and if he had tried brought it to a vote at the wrong time it would have lost and the money to enforce the treaty would have lost but he always waited and waited and

17:32 waited and when he felt the time was right he struck and that’s something you know you don’t get with box tops that’s something you learn over time you learn how to read people and you learn how to read the moment and and he by this time he knows how to do that right and uh perhaps reads the moment

17:53 really well when he again surrenders power back to the republic uh he wanted to after one term as you point out uh finally he’s able to after two terms and and retires from the presidency right uh and and lays down that principle of rotation in office and that he’s again not going to become a

18:13 caesar so you know how did washington develop those fine such fine-tuned political acumen to really set those right precedents for the for the republic going forward for the new nation to me it’s it’s two things and and it sounds a little it has the potential to

18:34 sound a little frivolous but i don’t mean it to he cared tremendously what his contemporaries thought about him um you know there was a concept in this era in the 18th century of fame and american leaders wanted fame but and we think of it as sort of you know you’ve got a lot of social media hits or you know and that’s not what they meant

18:57 what they meant was they were known because they had done important things and because they should be known they were worthy of being known and he cared a great deal about that now he writes a wonderful letter when he first becomes president back to a friend in virginia and says tell me what people are saying about what i’m doing and particularly tell me

19:18 what they don’t like i need to know that maybe i need to explain myself better maybe i need to change what i’m doing but i have to know that and that was his commitment to um care about that the other thing is he did care about what he thought history would think of him there is always in politics short-term

19:39 and long-term thinking and he was a long-term thinker he saw neutrality as what the country should do he was a soldier he was willing to fight when he had to but only when he had to and those were important principles to him and i think they stood the test of time

20:01 right well david we have a few more minutes uh tell us a little bit maybe about why why you wrote this book and and why is washington still famous today and why should we study him we should study him because of his you know frankly his leadership style he defined the presidency for us uh in a way that he

20:24 that’s what we expect in a president it is not always or even that often what we get um you know but we expect someone to be dignified to have character to care about people you know one of the qualities washington had that we tend to lose is his ability his emotional connection

20:45 with people um one french officer wrote about how when washington arrived in a town it was as though everybody in town was his father or his brother he just had a gift for talking to people simply modestly and hearing them was a great listener and you know that’s

21:06 a wonderful talent for a politician john adams referred to washington’s gift of silence now that has two elements one is you don’t say stupid things but the other is the other guy’s talking and you learn what’s on his mind and that’s a great talent and washington had that he had a form of

21:27 quiet leadership which i think could be quite firm in moments of crisis uh certainly in the middle of a battle or uh when he was dealing with the whiskey rebellion but was always courteous was always thoughtful and considerate and allowed people to

21:48 feel like they had been heard and you know we talk about that sometimes today but he didn’t have that the jargon we use but he understood that that was so important for his job and and i think it’s a model that uh we it behooves us to uh to listen to yeah i think that’s a

22:10 great point to finish on uh you’ve mentioned so many civic virtues today uh and and i i think there are lessons uh not only for young people uh watching but really for all of us uh as as we live in in our democracy and and need to practice civility as well as washington did well

22:31 david stewart uh author of george washington the political rise of america’s founding father thank you for joining us uh and enlightening us about george washington as politician thanks so much all right and thank you uh to our viewers for joining us as well uh if you like this video please be sure to subscribe to our channel below and

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