Why was George Washington important to the founders’ vision of the presidency?
About this video
A historian explains that when the presidency was created, everyone expected George Washington to be the first president. With no TV, radio or internet, most politicians were unknown outside their own states, but everyone knew Washington and Franklin. The Federalists used Washington as a symbol of national unity to win support for the new government, and Washington proved a brilliant political leader who understood his symbolic role.
You'll be able to
- explain why most founders and politicians were not well known across the country.
- explain why the Federalists wanted Washington as a symbol of national unity.
- describe how Washington used his role as a symbol to build the federal government's authority.
Key words
- Federalists
- Supporters of the new Constitution and a stronger central government.
- symbol
- A person or thing that stands for a bigger idea, like Washington standing for national unity.
- central government
- The national government, as opposed to the state governments.
Transcript
It's a long, complicated story. But when the presidency was created, originally, they were sure George Washington would be the first president. He was beloved. There was no TV, there's no radio, there was no Internet. People who lived in Georgia, didn't know any of the men who were the leading politicians in Massachusetts. People who lived in Virginia didn't know the leading politicians in New York.
Their faces weren't plastered all over anything. They were not well known. We know the extent to which this is true because when the men got to the constitutional convention, the men we call the founding fathers, most of them didn't know one another. They had never heard of one another. But the two men, everyone had heard of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington. Benjamin Franklin was elderly, he was extremely ill. Washington was in his prime. Everybody knew he would be the president. The nationalists or the Federalists decided that if they could make Washington the symbol of the unity of the country, that would go far to getting people to accept a new central government. Washington received letters from friends pressuring
him to take this job as the president of the United States. They said, without you, this government will never succeed. To a great extent, they were right. Washington had a genius understanding what was needed to be done in the presidency. He understood his role as a symbol. He understood how to make use of it. That is, he understood how to gain for the federal government the authority that it needed and he really was a brilliant political leader.
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