What George Washington Knew

...Which is why they have so often lost...

...He was also the first in a long line of men, from Andrew Jackson to Ronald Reagan, who were neither intellectual nor well-educated, but who understood the office and succeeded in it...

...without his ideas, he might have been passive and directionless...

...What are the keys-of mind, body, morals-that make some people leaders...

...Reagan was followed by a Phi Beta Kappa from Yale who was intermittently presidential and by a Rhodes Scholar and star student who does not "get" the office at all...

...They got rid of the Travel Office staff to help friends make money and then, to make themselves look better, defamed the staff...

...Abraham Lincoln is remembered as saintly- the "martyred Christ of the passion play of democracy," murdered, of course, on Good Friday-but he was ruthless in his pursuit of the Civil War...

...Kennedy was followed by two brilliant men of long experience, who disgraced the office and were driven from it...

...Adams resented Washington and denigrated him as an illiterate poseur, "the greatest actor of the presidency who ever lived...

...Lincoln was a man of depth and reflection, but his campaign posters showed him bare-armed, splitting rails...

...They did not show due "respect for those who are present...

...This is their m.o...

...Academic skill does not indicate political leadership...

...By contrast, the physical grace of Reagan and Kennedy suggested men of composure and confidence, who were not rattled by the blows of daily life...

...Mickey Kaus told New Republic readers that "Clinton is inconsiderate...

...Washington, Lincoln, and FDR led the country in war...

...FDR's success to charm and swagger...

...His Washington is a revelation, illuminating not simply his success, but the success and the failure of others...

...Last year, Joe Klein writes in Newsweek, Mrs...

...His campaign was habitually late . . . requiring audiences to wait for hours...

...Begin with an individual, and before you know it, you find that you have created a type," F. Scott Fitzgerald tells us...

...Academics attribute the popular allegiance to Reagan and Kennedy to their cosmetic attractions...

...Washington was followed by Adams, better educated and (in his own eyes) more brilliant, who did not shine in the office...

...Johnson was infamous for forcing interviews with fastidious members of his administration while using the toilet...

...Clinton's chief of staff wept on the stand explaining that she had spent more than $140,000 in legal expenses...

...Other writers have treated this as a quaint sort of exercise, one that showed Washington's unworldly nature...

...Since then, Maggie Williams has testified more times, and may face serious legal problems...

...much better than Madison, who was a disappointment...

...Few leaders succeed without physical drama...

...Someone else without the savvy to finesse the system...

...If they truly wish to better their ratings in the polls, as in Heaven, they might seek out a copy of the "Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour, in Company and Conversation" and commit it to memory...

...Quoth Mark Shields, a Democrat: "Loyalty goes only one way in this White House...

...Where do they fit in...

...Democracy is a system of government that responds to the will of the people, who agree to honor themselves and each other...

...Civility, as Washington learned it, is concern for, and deference to, the interests and feelings of others...

...Civility not only trained Washington to govern, but allowed him to master his ambition and temper...

...Reagan's military build-up was meant to bring peace without bloodshed, just as Washington's deployment of overwhelming force to disperse the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 was meant to express his conviction that the enemy of freedom was not law, but anarchy...

...Leaders explain big ideas...

...What the Clintons don't get, and never have gotten, is where the real problem lies...

...The Clintons have sent aides to face hostile congressional committees, leaving those aides open to perjury charges even as they have been forced to impoverish themselves...

...Johnson and Nixon had powerful minds, and could command fear in others...

...The focus," he writes, "was established in the very first rule: 'Every action done in public ought to be done with some sign of respect for those that are present.'" The "Rules" were Washington's primer in politics, a "system of courtesy appropriate to equals and near-equals...

...He designed his own uniforms, and wore them effectively...

...Both also set records for using public funds to embellish their residences...

...Without his physique, and the threat of his temper, he would have been inconsiderable...

...He himself described the George Masons, James Madisons, Alexander Hamiltons, and John Jays with whom he consorted as having "abler heads" than his own...

...Washington understood the synergy of freedom and power, as Reagan understood that of power and peace...

...Clinton nominated a close personal friend, Lani Guinier, to a sensitive post in the Justice Department without checking her writings and then, when the nomination became controversial, dropped not only it, but her...

...Politeness" and "politics" share one common root...

...The devious nature of Franklin Roosevelt was not held against him...

...Richard Nixon's awkward gestures and Bill Clinton's softness are clues to their governing styles...

...Without this he cannot do his job, which is, of course, to keep order, by suggesting that those breaking the peace will suffer for doing so...

...Bill Clinton was an academic star and Rhodes scholar...

...Washington was ambitious (in youth, very ambitious) and obsessed with his personal standing...

...This training was symbolized by, if it did not begin with, those "Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour...

...Nixon used scatological language to describe his own appointees...

...a better president than Jefferson, who was a good one...

...and the first to have those doubts confirmed by other men...

...And it knows its own limitations...

...Others- as different as John Adams, James Madison, Herbert Hoover, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Jimmy Carter-were bereft of Washington's qualities, and failed...

...Exquisitely courteous, Washington was loved by the country, an act of reciprocal courtesy...

...Teddy Roosevelt had his athleticism, Eisenhower the easy assurance that comes from command at high levels...

...A dangerous man who controlled himself, Washington became a true leader-not just a model president but a presidentmodel, a template for the exercise of responsible power...

...The only man greater than he, Abraham Lincoln, had even less formal schooling: Between them, the two greatest men in our history barely passed sixth grade...

...People sensed this, and came to detest them...

...they think that there is little they do not know...

...Our three great unlettered presidents-Washington, Jackson, and Lincoln-shared one big idea, an idea so large and basic it can be summed up in one word: union...

...Leaders of men tend to share in his magic, a blending of power and verve...

...His Moral Sense...

...It was the "credibility gap" opened by both of them that in the end swallowed them whole...

...Someone's name may be on the Wall in Washington, someone may be in a veterans' hospital, so that Bill Clinton could safely network at Oxford and continue to schmooze his way upward...

...Washington's mien was a study in discipline: grace taming the massive and powerful body...

...Frequently, not what we think...

...In one of Brookhiser's best moments, he shows a portrait of Washington to a bodybuilder, who tells him, "Nice quads...

...And read Richard Brookhiser's neat little book...

...Washington's "consciousness of a defective education" made him willing to listen to others, if not to believe their nostrums...

...Ronald Reagan, too, understood that power was the only thing that could ensure peace...

...the face suggesting "habitual conflict with and mastery of passion" in the compression of the mouth and brow...

...The body is a unit of physical power...

...Politicians explain many small programs...

...Force must exist, or intent will not matter...

...Seekers of power should seek out a gym...

...Reagan and Kennedy set the terms of the Cold War...

...The way men behave in polite society is related to how they order society," Brookhiser tells us...

...Brookhiser knows something else as well: that physical presence makes its maximum impact when it expresses what the leader is thinking and when that is what the country is about...

...Lincoln and Kennedy explained civil rights...

...That it may be less crucial to have trained intelligence than to have the right kind of mind-a mind that is perceptive, thematic, conceptual, and often imaginative...

...Begin with a type, and you find that you have created-nothing...

...The other, held only by some of them, was that a strong, efficient, and effective government, willing and ready to enforce structures of order, was central to the stability in which human rights flourish...

...What does this say about the mind of the leader...

...Conversely, the men who have gotten the back of the hand from the American people have been-shall we say- impolite...

...Since Lyndon Johnson, who was uncontrolled power, Democrats have nominated men who looked as if they could be crossed all too easily...

...They came from an English translation of a book of manners compiled by French Jesuits in 1595...

...What George Washington Knew By Noemie Emery In 1748 or thereabouts, a surveyor's apprentice on the Virginia Tidewater with ambitions toward social advancement and battlefield glory copied out 110 "Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour, in Company and Conversation" in a small, plain notebook...

...Fundamentally, he was a moral person, as the focus of his life was not himself...

...Richard Brook-hiser believes the two are connected, and he spends much of his new book, Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington, telling us why (Free Press,224 pages, $23...

...It is not that he protested the war or diminished by one the body count of the armed forces...

...Beginning with an individual-the insecure, undereducated first son of the second marriage of a marginal planter on the Virginia frontier-Richard Brookhiser has given us a type, a prototype of republican leadership, which all politicians, and voters, should heed...

...His successor, John Adams, was the first of an even longer line of mentally adept and expensively educated presidents who did not understand the office, and failed...

...His Cast of Mind...

...Someone else from Hope without patrons to help him...

...Brookhiser knows it was not...

...Guinier, he never called her again, not even when they were both on vacation, . . . not in all the months since...

...As in what Martin Nolan in the Boston Globe calls the "lingering toothache in Clinton's character, . . . that slow motion pursuit by his Arkansas draft board of the young Rhodes Scholar," which ended, of course, in successful evasion, after he had expressed the desire to "protect myself from physical harm...

...It stands to reason that both were careless with the truth, with the Constitution, and sometimes with the lives of others...

...Citing the self-importance of the boomer crowd, Nolan then posits, "Many of Clinton's generation avoided the draft, not simply out of fear or prudence, but because they considered themselves too important to serve...

...One of the poor or deprived...

...He spent much of the Revolutionary War carefully creating false impressions as to the size of his army, its whereabouts, and what it intended to do...

...A leader, Brookhiser suggests, does not need many ideas, and they need not be original...

...They came, let us remember, to "put people first...

...That was in August...

...It is a finely tuned judge of ideas and of people...

...Democracy is based on consideration for the rights and opinions of others, courtesy on the highest of possible levels...

...And what of the Clintons...

...Of course...

...The finer intellects of their time scoffed at both men...

...Washington had two other big ideas...

...Since assuming office, they have fired innocents, libeled friends, expected associates to take the fall for them...

...Reagan's model, Franklin Roosevelt, was a consummate actor, as were Roosevelt's contemporaries, Churchill and de Gaulle...

...But they need to be big...

...His Body...

...When the company for whom decent behavior was to be performed expanded to the nation," Brookhiser writes, "Washington was ready...

...If his physique commanded awe and deference, and his ideas summoned loyalty, his moral sense supplied the last critical level, by which he justified and legitimized his power and office...

...What is surprising . . . giving his hugging-and-sharing political style, is the absence of sentimentality when he cuts people loose...

...It is that he sent someone else...

...These are small matters...

...She has published biographies of George Washington and Alexander Hamilton...

...Men who are not dangerous make inadequate leaders, as they cannot control evil...

...the iron will tempered by manners and courtesy...

...Even as president, he makes kids shiver waiting for him in the White House rose garden...

...They turned on them...

...He was civil because he was civilized, politic because he was polite...

...These are people who put themselves first and others a very poor second...

...Simply put, they are not respected because they do not respect others...

...It is also a prop that a leader must always direct...

...And they turned them out...

...Correctly, Brookhiser puts Washington's moral sense at the core of his power: "If there is one aspect of Washington's character that was more important than the other two, it was his concern for his civility and reputation, which tamed and smoothed his natural endowments, and brought his ideas into daily life...

...Ending his formal education before the age of 16, Washington was a much better president than Adams...

...A president has to look, and be, dangerous...

...Someone else without friends or connections...

...Soon, her legal fees may equal those of Billy Dale...

...Clinton slips into something more convenient, others suffer," Dowd has written...

...Clinton dropped Ms...

...Dangerous men who cannot control themselves become tyrants...

...This is standard procedure...

...Every time Mr...

...Teddy Roosevelt's to dramatic effect...

...Body language" is an apt expression, as is "figure of speech...

...Correctly, he called his education "defective...

...John Adams called him "too illiterate, unlearned, unread for his station and reputation...

...Thomas Jefferson said he read "little...

...And now that the Travel Office staffers have been cleared in court trials, friends of the Clintons continue to defame them, to make their employers look good...

...Brookhiser, who knows more than they do, knows that looks, swagger, and drama are part of the package...

...Quite...

...He was trained to respect, and to consider, others...

...But the principle works in the big...

...Let's see...

...They know many things, but there's no guarantee they know a thing about the big things-the things George Washington knew...

...Similar complaints about Reagan came from frustrated Democrats, as they had come from John Kennedy's critics too, who traced his successes to nice teeth and good hair...

...Washington understood that freedom and power were inseparable...

...Washington, a devotee of the theater, also made a drama of governing style...

...Morals integrated him, and held his being together, even as they connected him with his fellow Americans...

...Franklin Roosevelt, who created the safety net, was a relentless hot warrior...

...The Father of His Country had a great body...

...Ready to be a republican leader, a plausible chief of free men...

...Intellectuals, on the other hand, have been told all their lives how clever they are, and tend to believe it...

...These were the qualities that gave him the power to lead other people, but would, in their raw state, have been dangerous...

...These are not people who Put People First...

...Iran-contra did not destroy Reagan, as he was thought to be acting in the interests of others...

...Leaders as different as Andrew Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, John Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan have had some of his qualities, which is why they were leaders...

...A president is expected to be ruthless, and allowed to be devious, if his fundamental objectives are seen to be valid and selfless...

...But if it does not, then what does...

...merely the first to have acted for money in films...

...It is conditioned to forests, not trees...

...Our first president was also the first to doubt his own mental credentials for holding the office...

...Johnson and Nixon were suspected of lying to save their political skins, and it did them in...

...Franklin Roosevelt had wasted legs, but what the public saw was the great, handsome head and radiant smile, the heavy muscles of the arms and shoulders, the massive upper body strength...

...As Brookhiser reminds us, Reagan was not the first actor to have served as president...

...Woodrow Wilson, the only true intellectual to reign in this century, was a long-term failure, a victim of the rigidity that did in Herbert Hoover...

...As a word, "civil" relates to "civilized," which is about taming nature and its dangerous elements...

...What many people found most strange," wrote the New York Times's Maureen Dowd, "was that once Mr...

...It is one more step to build up what Klein calls the "Body Count," the pile of corpses, literal and otherwise, that surrounds the First Couple, the testament to their true politesse...

...One, held by everyone then in his government, was that rights were inherent and derived from Providence...

...power under firm control...

...Which people...

...The key to this is leashed ferocity...

...Noemie Emery's "Abortion and the Republican Party: A New Approach" appeared in our December 25, 1995, issue...

...George Washington was always civil, and he soon became great...

...If he had lacked any of the three, or possessed any to a lesser degree, he could not have been the Father of His Country...