One of the most important events in American history took place this week in 1783, although few Americans remember it. On Dec. 23 of that year, George Washington stepped down as commander in chief of the Continental Army at the end of the American Revolution.
The virtues of that American founding generation have fallen out of favor in recent years — for good reasons and bad. Of course, many of that generation, including Washington, were slaveholders. Less abhorrent, but still at odds with our own age, they were an aristocratic lot who saw themselves as above what Washington called the “grazing multitude.” But our focus on the founders’ flaws sometimes masks their many virtues — virtues we often lack in our own day.
Washington — perhaps better than any other American who ever lived — understood the need to share power and to limit it. A leader of renown, Washington understood the lure of power, but more importantly, he resisted it in ways virtually no other American ever has.
Washington could have achieved lasting power by simply taking it. King George III reputedly was surprised that Washington did not take the power at the end of the revolution. Instead, time and time again, Washington recognized that power should be divided and dispersed in a republic that respected the democratic will of the people. He did this when he put down a coup among his own military officers (at Newburgh, New York). He did it when he shepherded the creation of a Constitution to preserve the republic. He did it, most famously, when he stepped down as president, declining to run for another term though many of his contemporaries begged him to stay.
Washington understood the importance of limited, shared and even divided power in American society. Do we?
Americans now live in an age where centralized power is seen as a means to safeguard our allies and punish our enemies. Is a social media platform out of line? Make sure it has the right leader to run it. Should a politician step back when reaching the typical age for retirement? Of course not, he or she is too essential. Should an executive yield to the cacophony of voices in a legislature that cannot agree on the right policy? Of course not. Act immediately, and act alone to do the right thing. Americans in our modern political discourse are quick to assume that simply taking the right actions will lead to legitimacy. Washington understood the flaw in this thinking.
We obsess over making sure that power is as centralized as we can make it — partisan power in city councils and Congress, ideological power in local schools and national universities, cultural power wherever it can be grabbed, from churches to social media to the entertainment industry. But Washington understood that the most legitimate decisions require limited and constrained power, not the bold actions of a leader, no matter how great he might be.
In contrast, modern partisans often swear allegiance to their latest leader. Donald Trump’s hold over his supporters is well known. And we are just about to start on a campaign among certain Democrats to make sure their own team (and the public, if possible) do not question Joe Biden’s need to remain as the nation’s leader even into his mid-80s. Partisans consistently claim that the other side is a cult and have a distressing amount of evidence to support that claim.
Ironically, Washington, despite his aristocratic nature, and despite the kind of power he wielded in his own life, was an impediment to this centralization tendency. Through the institutions he helped create (the U.S. Constitution, for one) and the example he set (the ability to walk away and turn over power), he showed how important a pluralistic democracy really is. And the institutions live on. Even though Washington’s example has faded in public memory, it is hard for parties or ideologies to gain control over American institutions these days because those institutions are so fractured that it is difficult to really control much in America.
I would not suggest that we add more national holidays (especially one so close to Christmas), but it would be nice if more Americans thought seriously about Washington’s act on Dec. 23, 1783.
He, perhaps uniquely in American history, had the chance to simply seize power, make himself a monarch and centralize authority. I have no doubt he was tempted. Washington saw a Congress that was so feckless it was unable to provide shoes or food to the army, but he did not usurp its authority. Instead, he consistently rejected the idea of a cult of personality, returning to his own “vine and fig tree,” letting others have their day in the sun.
When he resigned his commission, Washington said that if Americans would “not be completely free and happy, the fault will be entirely their own.” About that, he was right. His commitment to pluralism and shared power is a virtue that we need very badly in our own day.
Jeremy C. Pope is associate chair and professor of political science at Brigham Young University, as well as an author of “Founding Factions: How Majorities Shifted and Aligned to Shape the U.S. Constitution.” These views are his own.