![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Washington thought often of his role upon this “stage,” but never with irony or alienation: that role was General Washington, and General Washington was himself. He was, above all, a gentleman, in an almost Confucian sense of the term, a man who believed that proper manners, proper attire, and ethics were inextricably bound together, that there was no happiness apart from public duty, and that one achieved wisdom, by acting-with virtue-upon the stage of the world. George Washington, though, is one of the presidents I know about, and Burns and Dunn’s short history of his presidency has only confirmed for me what I already knew. For me, history has primarily been a way of understanding literature better, and, since I like Brit Lit more than American, I know less about the Compromise of 1850 than the Reform Bill of 1832, less about the Ludlow Massacre than the Peterloo Massacre, and less about the Adams and Roosevelts than the Plantagenets and the Tudors. But first I thought I should learn more about the forty-five men who have occupied the office, and I figured the brief lives in the Times Books American President Series would be a good place to start.Īlthough I am not ignorant of my country’s history, I am more ignorant than I should be. Now, in the late afternoon of our American Republic, during the reign of King Donald the Mad (and the Good Princess Ivanka), I feel I should reflect upon the nature of the American Presidency. ![]()
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