"Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. We're coming up on a big national anniversary, the (defiantly unspellable) semiquincentennial. To get in the spirit of things, I've been curled up with books about the founders, particularly George Washington, someone I became acquainted with when I wrote a book about him many years ago. But meanwhile, our current president has been honking away in the distance-a man difficult to abide."
"So why will history judge them as polar opposites? In part because Washington readily and repeatedly gave up power. He did so conspicuously at the end of the War of Independence, then again after eight years as president. He lived in an era in which selflessness was considered one of the core virtues of a great leader, and at crucial moments in our history, he behaved accordingly."
"His decision to appoint himself as chair of the Kennedy Center was outrageous enough, but then he put his name on the place. He also put his name on the United States Institute of Peace, just a few blocks away. His face is all over D.C. now, on huge banners hanging from government buildings. He wants Dulles International Airport named for him, and also Penn Station."
An upcoming national semiquincentennial prompts examination of the founders with a focus on George Washington and contrasts to the current president. Both men were born wealthy, acquired large estates, lived in grand houses, were thin-skinned, image-conscious, and strongly nationalistic. Washington repeatedly surrendered power—after the War of Independence and after two presidential terms—embodying selflessness as a leadership virtue. The current president aggressively seeks and clings to authority, practices self-aggrandizement, and asserts extralegal powers. He extensively brands public institutions and spaces with his name and image and pursues the naming of major transportation hubs.
Read at Slate Magazine
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