In fact, most of the historians I have recently read (Ellis, McCullough are two) say Washington was
was essential. He was the Republic. Why?

He was first. He set the most important precedents for his office. There were some, maybe many, who would have acceded to a form of monarchial leadership for America. Washington led us otherwise.

People of his time, most people (the 13 states were a variegated bunch, more so than we today) trusted Washington. Revisionists today may ask why? but the fact remains. Easily his most important asset was his character. That’s unimaginably different from today’s politics. His was unimpeachable.

John Adams gloomed that men formed a Washington deity; it was almost that. We needed such. The country was a wobbly entity during the formative years after the Peace Treaty of 1783. Most of Europe was waiting for us to fail. Washington’s mere presence calmed a new country. One historian I consulted said that the Constutional Convention would possibly have failed without his presence. He would make the first Presidential tour and find crowds eager to march around him in every state. He was the symbol of American promise.

As far as my own thinking about PResidents, many Americans of Washington’s time accepted the idea of Providence. Washington himself professed the term. When one looks at the twists and turns in our history, one might choose to join their thinking, especially as it applies to Presidents. From Lincoln, to FDR, to Reagan, to GW Bush
, America has possessed a leader at critical times who answered the big question. Americans may quibble about the specific policies, thinking, or actions of each of the leaders. But, as was true with George Washington, each leader kept us afloat in a time when it mattered.

I think that’s a mark we must set for Mr. Obama, as well as other pretenders. During the years after Kennedy, I feel American has suffered as a country when we have chosen weak, foolish leaders. Who will give us strength and character in our present time of crisis?
That’s the big question.

(BTW, John Ferling’s ‘A Leap in the Dark,’ chronicles the vicissitudes of the period. Might the colonies have sought
separate peace agreements; I think Maryland tried. Might England have kept the South through her late war strategy, allowing only theother colonies their freedom? What about the forces who wanted a French/English West beyond the Appalachians, penning the struggling ‘free colonies’ along the Eastern seaboard, sooner or later to be snatched back by G. Britain. Fascinating glimpses of what could have been in Mr. Ferling’s study.)

Such foolishishness and arrogance is nothing new, there have been many cultures and people that demonstrated such.