On President’s Day…
Remembering President Washington.
He lent his nationwide credibility to the Convention by agreeing to be its President. This was an extraordinary gesture. It’s easy for us to think nowadays that the Constitutional debate was fought over abstract principles and the highest notions of the public good – but, like everything else in America, politics mattered a great deal. That George Washington was willing to lend his good name to the Convention was a truly selfless act of statesmanship. His signature on the final document – the first of 39 – might very well have made the difference in the Virginia ratifying convention, where the Constitution passed by a hair’s breadth. Surely, if Washington had refused to support the Constitution, it would have failed.
