Washington: A Life

George Washington understood earlier than most of his peers that credibility in a republic would rest as much on perception as on performance. As Chernow notes in the Prelude, “Where other founders gloried in their displays of intellect, Washington’s strategy was the opposite: The less people knew about him, the more he thought he could accomplish. Opacity was his means of enhancing his power and influencing events” (5). The sentence highlights a lifelong program of deliberate reserve. Beginning with the youthful copying of The Rules of Civility, Washington treated posture, courtesy, and even silence as tools of governance; every controlled gesture promised steadiness in an age suspicious of ostentation.

That self-conscious staging only intensified once he entered national life. In the Continental Congress he appeared in full uniform to signal readiness for sacrifice, then declined a salary to underscore a lack of interest in profit. As commander he rode the lines conspicuously, but rationed his public words, cultivating an almost sacral aura around his person. After victory he surrendered his sword and retreated to Mount Vernon, making renunciation itself a political statement. John Adams later marveled, “If Washington was not the greatest president, he was the best actor of the presidency we have ever had” (601), a wry acknowledgement that ceremony—the levees, the plain but impeccable attire, the calibrated distance—was integral to the new office’s legitimacy.