He is shown as the greatest of the Founders, not for his excesses, but for his restraint and the restraint he inserted into the American character. Thanks first to David McCullouch for 1776 and now to Ron Chernow for his magnificent biography, the character, intelligence, ambition, weaknesses and strengths of our first President emerge in full. Nevertheless, I came to view Washington as a distant, cold, perhaps even limited character due to his storied reticence, maybe even a creature the vent of some humor because of his mythical wooden teeth. I've long since given up many of the myths (lies) we were taught as children – Pastor Weems' “Father, I cannot tell a lie” about the cherry tree, the coin across the Rappahanock, and so-on. George Washington has always been a sort of cardboard character to me.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |