Washington’s Lessons in Democratic Statesmanship
Connecting theory to practice, and the spirit of the moment to lasting principles.
Gilbert Stuart, George Washington (The Athenaeum Portrait), April 12, 1796. Oil on canvas. 47.99 x 37 in. Collection National Portrait Gallery.
George Washington would be very out-of-place if he had risen to power in the 21st century. While some of this can be chalked up to simple facts like changing attitudes on sex, race, and other sociocultural issues, something deeper lies in his “out-of-placeness;” his alien status to the modern American. Already in his own time, Washington was held to be an almost mythic figure.
Mount Vernon was far from Mount Olympus, but it was closer to Mount Olympus than most good liberal citizens would be comfortable admitting. At the time of his death in December of 1799 -- what a shame it was that Washington never saw the dawn of the 19th century! -- he was venerated by Americans as a great man; a godlike founder of a great nation. “Our WASHINGTON is no more!” thundered Representative John Marshall, “the hero… lives now only in his great actions, and in the hearts of an affectionate and afflicted people.”
His legacy was so influential that Abraham Lincoln evoked his name in his famous Lyceum Address nearly 40 years after his passing, framing the task of Americans leading up to the Civil War (and beyond) to preserving his patrimony: let it be said of his generation, Lincoln said, that “we improved to the last; that we remained free to the last; that we revered his name to the last; that, during his long sleep, we permitted no hostile foot to pass over or desecrate his resting place; shall be that which to learn the last trump shall awaken our WASHINGTON.”
Washington was a man, but he lives on in the minds of his fellow countrymen as something more. And perhaps he was truly something more than simply “man.”
Despite governing a democratic nation, Washington retained and exhibited distinctly aristocratic virtues, contradicting the natural democratic suspicion of aristocratic mores that existed, albeit as a sapling rather than an oak, in his own time. Washington was careful to cultivate a particular personal reputation that reflected not simply his status as fellow citizen, but as something greater. This matter strikes at the question of democratic statesmanship: are political leaders in a democratic society simply molded by public opinion? Can they shape public opinion, appealing to higher principles than the spirit of the moment? Is the truth some combination of both of these principles? I posit that much like Alexis de Tocqueville’s theory of the social state, leaders are both shaped by and shapers of public sentiment.
They are not simply guided by the hand of the democratic will to chisel out a more perfect (or less perfect) union, nor do they stand above public opinion as vanguards of principles that exist beyond public sentiment. Washington stands as a model of the democratic statesman, concealing within his public humility a fiery ambition which followed him from his days as a British officer through to his final days at Mount Vernon. In him, a keen understanding of the demos and a reflective aristocratic disposition coalesced to produce the consummate democratic statesman.
The concept of statesmanship itself is out-of-fashion today, at least in academic circles. “Great man” theories of history which posit the centrality of particular historical leaders in shaping events have given way to a distinct historicism. No longer does a serious academic study a supposedly “great man” or “great woman” to sketch out the essence of their soul and their impact on the world; instead, the trained modern researcher seeks to understand all past events and historical currents as products of impersonal variables beyond the human will. The American founding, and the drafting and implementation of the Articles of Confederation and then the Constitution, were not contingent events that came into being -- even partially -- as a result of the careful exertion of particular exalted people’s wills, but the inevitable result of geography, economic conditions, and historical trends. The famed debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas are not indicative of serious ideological disagreements, but “sound and fury, signifying nothing...” or at least reflective of nothing more than these men’s base material and political motives.
Just as Newtonian science introduced an atomic understanding to the physical sciences, modernity sought to reduce the complexity of the human person and their potential to shape historical currents to the litany of inhuman variables that might have led people to make certain pivotal decisions. History, and the potential for free human action, are reduced to an increasingly rigid determinism. This understanding of history has, perhaps unbeknownst to its champions, deprived people of every sort -- from the potential statesman to the local librarian -- of a belief in their own agency. The human actor is replaced by the human acted-upon. And we are told that this is “enlightened” and “liberating”!
This narrow reductionist approach has simultaneously deprived liberal citizens of their own perceived capacity for free action, and potential statesmen of fertile soil to grow. It is therefore of the utmost importance for liberal citizens to reclaim an understanding of statesmanship, and in turn, a belief that all people possess a will and, with it, the capacity to change the course of history (or, at the least, the course of their own lives).
“We have lost the conviction that ideas require men to bring them to earth,” writes Richard Brookhiser, “and that great statesmen must be great men.” Embracing an outlook that is “simultaneously too ethereal and too down-to-earth,” we believe that abstract ideas can direct history, but also that “historical figures, who floated like chips in the intellectual backwash, attached themselves to [causes] for trivial motives…” If we still believe in statesmen, they are gods who descend from on-high to impose their will on an unwilling world. No wonder we have lost faith in our capability to become them, or even to approximate them. But statesmen are made of flesh and blood.
They have lived, do live, and will live in the context of their time. They have families, and lives, and flaws. And in spite of their mere humanity, they are capable of comprehending the present with such clarity that they are able to see beyond it. This is precisely why George Washington, and an investigation of his life and leadership, are the ideal starting point for a revival of belief in statesmanship and its promise. His life and legacy illumine the nature of democratic statesmanship far more than any theoretical treatise ever could. “If Washington’s contemporaries were too willing to be awed, we are not willing enough.” Let us have the courage to straighten our shoulders and lift our heads up towards the horizon. For now, let’s take a moment to at least look up towards Mount Vernon.
Beginning with the core of Washington’s being, his personal virtue and commitment to moral ends are what defined the contours of his soul. While many historians have chalked up his notorious aristocratic demeanor to the station of his birth -- having been born to a landed aristocratic Virginia family -- a more compelling account of his life suggests that his commitment to aristocratic virtues also derives from both an interest in the ancient Romans and his possession of The Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and in Conversation, a collection of teachings compiled by French Jesuits in the 16th century.
Likely having received the book during his short time in school (Washington was among the least formally educated of the Founding Fathers), Washington kept a copy in his study until the day of his death. These Jesuit virtues, as the title suggests, are not theological virtues that stress one’s direct standing before God. Rather, they provide “guidelines for dealing with others, based on attending to their situations and their sensibilities.” The Christian gentleman must attend to his right standing before the Lord, but he also must strive to maintain his right standing among his neighbors.
These guidelines on right social interaction began by instructing its readers on how to organize their households correctly, but quickly swell into larger moral teachings which evidently influenced Washington’s conduct. One of which stands out: “To one that is your equal, or not much inferior, you are to give the chief place in your lodging, and he to whom it is offered ought at the first to refuse it, but at the second to accept though not without acknowledging his own unworthiness.” In this teaching, Washington learned both how to manage his household, and how to govern a nation. Though he possessed mighty ambition and likely aspired to high office -- from leading the Continental Army to the United States government -- he did not outwardly display this ambition. Rather he waited for his fellow countrymen to call on him. For Washington, “Politeness is the first form of politics.”
But, as was previously mentioned, Washington also possessed a real interest in the ancient Romans. American fascination with the Romans had an obvious cause: the Romans did what America set out to accomplish; that is, they established “an extensive republic over a course of centuries.”
Another book accompanied Washington’s copy of The Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior since his youth: Seneca’s Morals. In addition to Morals, Washington’s study of Roman virtue was buoyed by a favorite play titled Cato. In the play, Cato the Younger opts to commit suicide rather than submit to Caesar. Washington’s favorite lines focused on the necessity of tempering one’s anger and passions, and of preserving one’s honor in spite of unpopularity. But the largest flaw with these virtues, in light of Washington’s commitment to good morals and the humane treatment of others, “is that they are inhumane.”
Cato cursed Caesar’s virtues -- the virtues of humanity -- because he believed that they’d undone the country. So it is incorrect to imply that Washington took his cues from the Romans, though he did learn much from them. Washington was not a Roman. But he learned important lessons from them, balancing his humane sensibilities -- his focus on good manners and right conduct -- with an understanding that sometimes justice would not be popular; that, “True fortitude is seen in great exploits; That justice warrants, and that wisdom guides; All else is towering frenzy and distraction.”
He understood the reality of the world, and the complexities of governing a democratic people. He also grasped that there was something beyond the popular will; that the role of a statesman is not simply that of a mirror reflecting the people back on themselves. The world of flesh and blood was indeed one governed by interest, but Washington saw that such interest could be “guided by justice…” Thucydides was right that, on this side of Heaven, “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must,” but it cannot be lost on any statesman that it was the Delian League that triumphed; the Athenians who were finally defeated in the fateful Sicilian Expedition.
Washington’s incorporation of both Jesuit and Roman virtues illustrates the dual nature of the statesman: he must attend to public perception and right standing among those he governs, and also call them towards higher things. He must be regarded as a fellow citizen, but also something greater.
This is the curse of the democratic statesman: more than even the demagogue, he must be concerned about his reputation, and how he is perceived by the public eye. And indeed, Washington was meticulous about the maintenance of his reputation. “Washington and his contemporaries thought of reputation as a thing that might be destroyed or sullied,” explains Brookhiser, “... some valuable cargo carried in the hold of the self.”
A statesman must both be admired by his fellow countrymen, and point them up towards higher things. He must meet those he governs where they are at, and direct them up from democracy’s leveling of horizons. During a political battle between the House of Representatives and Washington in 1795 over John Jay’s treaty with the British Empire, Jefferson borrowed a line from Cato, writing to James Madison in reference to Washington, “Curse his virtues, they’ve undone this country.” Was Washington, then, a Caesar? He was not. Nor is any true democratic statesman. But neither was he Cato the Younger. Washington was neither and Athenian, nor a Spartan. So how does a statesman go about navigating this tension -- between the spirit of the people and higher principles -- in reality?
Washington’s military leadership during the Revolutionary War was a defining moment for his statesmanship, and provides an explanation for how he was able to connect theory to practice; the demos to higher principles. He was not leading a professional army with decent pay, ample supplies, and a reservoir of pre-existing commitment to the nation they sought to form. Rather, he led a volunteer force that, if paid at all, were paid in bank notes that were only as valuable as the full faith and credit of the Continental Congress (in other words, not very valuable at all). This goes without mentioning the fact that most volunteers were driven more by local and state commitments than they were by any belief in a “United States,” whatever feelings that name conjured at this point in American history.
Washington could not lead the whole of his army into battle with the promise of honor and glory, let alone a sense of patria that could encompass the townships of New England and southern plantations. He had to keep their baser interests in mind, working to align them -- and those of the states and regiments they hailed from -- with a broader strategic goal: namely, winning the war. Through the crucible of war and its brutal winters, Washington refined a skill that all statesmen must possess. He learned how to align higher principles of justice with the base interests which often shape decision-making.
He learned how to bridge the gap between a world enthralled by Thrasymachus and a conscience that perceived a horizon beyond raw interest. It is a testament to such statesmanship that only 20 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Washington was able to utter these words in his Farewell Address: “it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national Union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.”
This remark, of course, would not have been complete without Washington’s lengthy argument for the indispensable economic ties between the north and south; east and west. He was not simply declaring a common American patria and hoping that others would follow. He was making the argument for such a sentiment.
Here lies the art of statesmanship. Working through the muck of the world as-it-is, he set in motion an alignment of interests which would weave a confederation of colonies into a nation. Through an alignment of particular interests towards higher goals, Washington forged a sense of patria that one day would span not only Boston and Atlanta, but New York and San Francisco; the Rockies and Appalachia. Beginning with a sober-minded assessment of the world as-it-was, Washington brought it ever so closer to the world as it ought-to-be. The role of the statesman, then, is that of a symphonic conductor, bringing together distinct groups around a common moral objective.
But can any statesman be truly regarded as both fellow citizen and, in the case of Washington, “Founding Father?” Or was Washington truly a Caesar; democratic statesmanship an oxymoron?
The United States, according to Tocqueville, is the ultimate democratic nation. More so than any other nation in the world, the continent-straddling empire embodies democracy, with all its bounties, and all its defects. Set apart from other nations, America was not founded narrowly upon racial, ethnic, religious, or “blood and soil,” but rather upon grander principles that many of the nation’s founders took to be universal. The Declaration of Independence’s claim that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with the rights to “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” was not analogous to the colonists’ other call to be accorded the “Rights of Englishmen,” but rather a statement of principles that its authors took to apply to all nations, and all peoples.
People, regardless of parochial attachments, truly possessed these rights, and were truly “equal,” regardless of the recognition of these rights by political regimes. The United States embodied an aspiration at least as old as Moses to be a Chosen People -- or, at least, an almost Chosen People -- living in the Promised Land. Equality -- the heart of democracy -- animated this new nation.
Regardless of whether or not the basic fact of human equality is “self-evident,” the notion that people are equal is taken for granted in American society. This seed of equality, says Tocqueville, grows into the tree of democracy. Equality is democracy’s basest impulse. “I think that democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom; left to themselves, they will seek it, cherish it, and view any deprivation of it with regret,” wrote Tocqueville. “But for equality their passion is ardent, insatiable, incessant, invincible; they call for equality in freedom; and if they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery.”
This natural egalitarian impulse cuts against any vestige of aristocracy, convicting democratic people that all just power is derived from the will of the whole. Americans are given to a natural majoritarianism as a result, which can itself become despotic. The only remedy to such potential tyranny, therefore, is a “mildness of government” found in “circumstances and mores rather than laws.” Democracy, left on its own majoritarian trajectory, quickly destroys itself, and any promise it held for the protection of justice and the protection of true equality.
Democracy also reduces the scope of human ambitions, concentrating a democratic peoples’ focus more and more on worldly things. They are turned towards materialism and away from religious sentiment, “But as the lights of faith are obscured, men’s view shrinks and one who sau that the object of human actions appears closer to them each day.” It is therefore incumbent upon democratic leaders, argues Tocqueville, to “move back the object of human actions.” American statesmen are called to lift up a fast-moving, materialistic populace towards eternity; or at least beyond the present moment. Arguing that philosophers and moralists occupy themselves with this very task in democratic and irreligious nations, Tocqueville makes clear that “The task of those who govern is no less delineated.” Democratic statesmen, therefore, are not simply representatives of public opinion. They are called to something greater.
Washington grasped that democracy alone was not sufficient to sustain itself. It requires the habits and mores of a free people, refined through a self-governance which prepares people for the burdens of a free society. Such habits and mores are informed primarily through institutions of civil society such as local churches and synagogues, but they can also be shaped by the character of political leaders. As we learned, Washington understood that politeness preceded politics. His aristocratic demeanor and focus on right conduct were not simply a matter of his personal preferences, but a reflection of his understanding that as a statesman, his actions set the tone for those he governed.
He was an equal to his fellow citizens, though it may very well be said that he was primus inter pares -- first among equals. “In all times it is important that those who direct nations conduct themselves with a view to the future.” Their role is not confined to public affairs, narrowly understood, for “by their example they also teach particular persons the art of conducting private affairs.”
The task of the democratic statesman amounts to a Thucydidean balancing game: harnessing the ambitious, innovative spirit of Athens and tempering it with the deliberate and pious Spartan soul. Democracy is naturally fast-moving and occupied with immediate action. It requires the ballast of deliberate leadership with a mind to the future; a soul concerned with more than the passions of the moment. Much like the role of the study of classical Greek and Latin literature in American society, democratic statesmanship has the potential to “prop us up on the side where we lean.” But it must resist the temptations of tyranny and of demagoguery, of Caesar and of Cato the Younger. Democratic statesmen walk a narrow road.
It would be easy, however, to dismiss this thesis along the following lines: Washington was a man of contradictions, and had he truly been committed to democracy, he would not have displayed aristocratic virtues. But the American project represents these very tensions. The effort of the Founding generation -- and the promise of the United States of America -- was not to collapse all tensions into pure theory, but to balance natural tensions to produce better outcomes. In Federalist 51, James Madison makes this crystal clear in his declaration that the Constitution would establish a government that would enable “Ambition… to counteract ambition.”
Democracy, like any ideology, will eat itself alive so long as it is deprived of any regulating mechanisms; of any checks on its reign. Democratic statesmen recognize this fact, carefully guiding the nation they govern towards, yes, democratic equality, but also something higher.
Perhaps Americans, like any people, still look up. And when they do gaze beyond the work in front of them, if for but a moment, what will they see?
References
Brookhiser, Richard. Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington. New York: Free Press, 1996.
de Tocqueville,Alexis. Democracy in America, trans. Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
James Madison. "The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances between the Different Departments." In The Federalist Papers, edited by Clinton Rossiter, 319-328. New York: Mentor, 1999.
Lincoln, Abraham, "The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions: Address Before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois," January 27, 1838, Abraham Lincoln Online, accessed April 30, 2023, https://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/lyceum.htm.
Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1901.
U.S. Congress. Joint Committee on Printing. "Compilation of Presidential Documents: Message from the President of the United States Transmitting an Annual Compilation of Presidential Documents." 106th Congress, 2nd session, S. Doc. 106-21. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2000.
Washington's Farewell Address. Bill of Rights Institute. Accessed May 1, 2023. https://billofrightsinstitute.org/primary-sources/washingtons-farewell-address