A Partisan Hack Misses a Moment—As Does Biden
ICYMI
The “How Should a President Be” speaking tour has begun!
I gave a keynote in front of my largest crowd (450!) in Fredericksburg, Virginia, on Tuesday night.
A Partisan Hack Misses a Moment—As Does Biden
On January 6, The Hill published an op-ed that still needles me. “Of course, Washington was a unifying figure,” opined Jonathon Turley, the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University Law School, proving he understands very little about his employer’s namesake.1
And for his part, President Joe Biden, the subject of Turley’s agenda-driven, historically illiterate rant, opted for Jon Meacham-level nostalgia when a poignant lesson about our past was there for the taking.
In early 1778, Congress sent a five-man delegation to Valley Forge to, as its chairman Francis Dana described it, “rap a demi-god over the knuckles.” That “demi-god” was Washington, who had become the target of a slander campaign by power-hungry rivals.
But when Dana got to Valley Forge, reality afforded him an opportunity Turley and his merry band of performative commentators and politicians consistently miss: He put America first. Washington, Dana reported back, was nothing like the man they’d been warned about. He was, as Lin-Manuel Miranda put it, “outgunned, outmanned, outnumbered, outplanned,” but he needed more support than money could afford. Congress had to rally behind an imperfect person, the only kind I’ve ever met, if they wanted him to be successful—and by extension, the country.
Dana would later describe that moment as one of the proudest of his life.
I doubt Turley has read my Washington biography, but I’d bet money he claims to have read others, and those books are displayed on his bookshelf. His takeaways, however, suggest the spines are unbroken. Washington wasn’t “a unifying figure during his lifetime” because he would have polled well. He wasn’t uncritically celebrated for long stretches of the American Revolution and two terms in office. He was something better: A trustworthy steward.
Many bold-faced founders wrote anonymous essays eviscerating Washington—and when they signed their names, it was even worse. Thomas Jefferson accused President Washington of “reaping credit from the good arts of others.” In an open letter, Thomas Paine predicted the world would be “puzzled to decide” if Washington had “abandoned good principles or ever had any.”
Turley makes another critical error, asserting that Washington received “invitations to become a monarch” at Valley Forge and RSVP’d with regrets. Letters Washington wrote, and letters written about him, show us he was impatient to give up power both times. His restraint, honor, and humility were notable in an era of kings and queens, dictators and despots, and the peaceful transition of power continued for almost 250 years.
Turley got one thing half-right: Washington didn’t “declare all Tories to be traitors.” Like Biden, the General preferred evidence to insult. Insurrectionists were given a fair trial and found guilty, but those who have spoken to the media appear to lack remorse. If Washington was in Biden’s position, he would circulate those interviews. That’s exactly what he did with accounts of British and Hessian violence against Americans. These stories, which proved that loyalists (those who remained loyal to the crown) were not exempt, did wonders in the court of public opinion. Enough was enough.
Washington also took a harsher approach to insurrectionists. He sidestepped the Constitution and sent an armed response to the Whiskey Rebellion, but when troops arrived in PA, there was no one to fight. The same cannot be said for January 6. Anyone with internet access can watch footage of armed insurrectionists storming the capitol and read about their subsequent convictions—as well as the deaths of those who attempted to repel them.
In Washington’s Farewell Address, he warned Americans that a “love of power will tend to create a real despotism in America.” The Hill is helping Turley, a partisan hack woefully in need of some quiet reading time, do his part, too.
See you soonish! Until then, you can find me on Twitter and Instagram. If you’d like a personalized copy of my books, please order them from Oblong.
Turley is a contributor at Fox, which is curiously absent from his bios.
Turley has been writing a dilettante's op-ed for dilettantes since Clinton was impeached. He's a marketer, not a scholar.
Is there a video link to your talk at MWU?