As America nears its 250th year, a reassessment of the first president whose judgment shaped the survival of the Republic is in order.
President’s Day is often treated as a generic celebration of presidents – or, more commonly, as a convenient sales event marking the approach of spring. The modern observance, falling between the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, has become a combined civic ritual that tends to flatten the distinct stature of each.
In that reduction, something essential has been lost. The day was not created to promote consumption or to blur distinct lives into an amorphous narrative. Nor was it meant to compress the memory of the presidency itself into a single interchangeable observance. It was meant to preserve memory – and to illuminate character.
Now, as the nation approaches the 250th anniversary of its independence, this should be an occasion not for sweeping abstraction or retail distraction, but for serious reflection – particularly on the character of the man who shaped the presidency at its most fragile time.
Through it all, George Washington remains perhaps the most misunderstood of the Founders.
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