I found myself gazing at George Washington’s teeth the other day.
They weren’t wooden, as lore has it. On a trip to Mount Vernon in Virginia, which I had somehow never visited as an adult, even though my hometown is named after him, I learned that his spring-loaded dentures were fashioned from human, horse and cow teeth. Washington was always nervous that his teeth would fly out of his mouth. Those chompers kept him in constant pain. But the Father of the Country was uncomplaining, unlike the Crybaby of the Country we have now.
“I just can’t imagine two human beings who are more dissimilar than George Washington and Donald Trump,” Ron Chernow, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of our first president, told me, on the occasion of the 250th birthday party for America that Trump has hijacked.
“Washington was discreet, reserved, courteous — he avoided any kind of show or ostentation or self-promotion,” Chernow said. “With Donald Trump, it’s nonstop bragging and boasting and self-promotion that would have been, I think, completely alien to George Washington, and very much counter to his idea of the way that a public servant should behave.”
It’s illuminating to look back at the life of the man who refused to be king now that we have a man who fancies himself a king.
On Monday, signing a presidential memorandum, Trump said, “We rule by common sense, to a large extent.”
The word is “govern,” Mr President, not “rule”.
Talking about the cauldron of heat this weekend, Trump boasted about his Independence Day speech on the Mall: “I’m going to make a really long speech, just to show that I can do anything.”
The hero who commanded the Continental Army was protective of the nascent democracy, realising its fragility. Cadet Bone Spurs maliciously erodes it, seeing it as a hindrance to his lust for untrammeled power and cash grabs.
Washington was beloved by many for giving away power he could have kept. Trump is reviled by many for snatching power he isn’t entitled to. One was methodical and judicious, hoping to consult with the Senate more than the Senate even wanted him to. The other is driven by whims, co-opting legislative powers on tariffs and war. Washington actively avoided, as president, interfering in congressional races. Trump meddles in primaries to exact revenge and test fealty.
John Adams praised Washington for his self-command — a trait foreign to Trump.
One was modest — reflected in the refined but decidedly unflashy furnishings at Mount Vernon. The other is megalomaniacal — reflected in the blinding gold accouterments festooned around the West Wing and his immoderate ballroom, which would eclipse a White House that was meant to provide a contrast with the extravagant palaces of Europe.
One famously wouldn’t tell a lie. The other famously can’t stop telling lies.
Just about the only thing they have in common is that Washington’s myth involved him chopping down a cherry tree. And Trump may want to do the same with some of our historic cherry trees, as he usurps East Potomac Park to install a ritzy golf course.
Chernow reflected on Trump’s astonishing grifting in office. In the first year of his second term, Trump collected $US1.4 billion ($2 billion) from his crypto ventures. (He made a fortune, even though the memecoin he hawked to his supporters is worth astronomically less now than it was when he took office.) Overall, his first year in office netted him at least $US2.2 billion. “George Washington was a man of such unimpeachable integrity — there was not the faintest hint of scandal during his presidency — and he was always very reluctant to accept any kind of gift because he was afraid people might interpret it as a bribe,” he said. Washington agonised before accepting shoe buckles from David Humphreys, his aide-de-camp during the Revolutionary War and speechwriter during his presidency.
Trump is a connoisseur of quid pro quo. He took his first flight Wednesday on Qatari Force One with its faux library and massage chairs. (He plans on keeping the plane when he goes, if he ever goes.)
When Trump was asked last year how he could scoff at the Constitution and accept such a lavish emolument from a foreign government, he breezily replied, “I could be a stupid person and say, ‘Oh no, we don’t want a free plane.’”
“Trump can make all this money off cryptocurrencies and meme tokens, and there’s nothing in the Constitution specifically preventing that other than the president’s own sense of shame and integrity — and those don’t seem to apply with very great force to our president,” Chernow said. “Trump is very good at finding these holes in the system. He seems to have a sixth sense.
“Our founders did worry a lot about the future emergence of a demagogue,” Chernow said. “Their fear was what used to be called, in the 18th century, the man on horseback — the idea that after a bloody revolution, the victorious general would parlay the victory into power and become a dictator.”
Washington loved his horses, but he wanted to be a farmer, not a monarch.
“The American people were willing to entrust him with great power because he didn’t seem to be grasping for power,” Chernow said. “He was doing things out of a sense of duty and service and, if anything, felt burdened by the powers he assumed. During the eight years of the Revolutionary War, he only got to return to Mount Vernon three times.”
Chernow confessed that he is worried. “My biggest fear at the moment is that we forget who we are as a people, because a democracy is not just a matter of creating institutions and principles — it’s also a matter of following certain customs and traditions that have grown up over time. Those started with George Washington, who established a benchmark of presidential behaviour: that the president should be gracious and dignified, courteous and humble, sincere and responsible. He had this natural gravitas and dignity that I think is really essential to the office. And now we have a president who, I suspect, has probably never read a history book.” The historian — whose biography of Alexander Hamilton was the basis of the musical phenomenon — also blames Americans for neglecting to learn about the miracle that Washington and the other founders conjured, a miracle that is now in jeopardy.
“You can’t begin to explain to them that the system the founders created is being trampled on if they don’t have the rudimentary sense of what the whole design was supposed to be,” he said. “That’s why memory is so important.”
Mount Vernon’s guardian of memory is the cool young historian Lindsay Chervinsky, who is the executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library.
She gave me a tour where I got to see Washington’s notes on his Senate visit; one of his tender love letters to Martha; and Martha’s recipe for “cherry bounce,” her husband’s cocktail of choice — a potent mix of cherries, French brandy, white sugar, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg.
Chervinsky has been trying to stay positive on the occasion of the nation’s semiquincentennial.
“When people ask me what Washington would think today, my first reaction is that there’s a lot he would be disappointed by, and there’s a lot that he would find very recognisable, even if not ideal,” she said. “But I think the dominant feeling would be one of joy that the nation is still here, because most republics just don’t last that long, and he knew that.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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