Some Presidents age better under scrutiny than others. Despite well-known faults, I’ve found that a John F. Kennedy or Abraham Lincoln holds up the more I read about them, and in fact my opinion may actually improve. As far as Richard Nixon goes, the more I read the more appalled I become.

George Washington has always been a hero of mine. I found myself lured back to Ron Chernow’s massive biography because frankly I’ve become disillusioned with the whole party system in this country, especially the cult of personality around one man undeserving of our devotion. Reverting to backwards customs and prejudices best left in the 19^th Century is not the way forward and will not advance our nation’s progress. Reminding ourselves of the integrity, decency and civility of the Founding Fathers, as well as their faults, might engender some much-needed humanity in our future leaders.

This biography is dense but engaging. In terms of bias, the author is clearly in love with his subject, though he’s not shy about expounding on his contradictions and failings. While Washington didn’t originate radical ideas, he had valuable coaches in the Revolutionary period like George Mason, and once these ideas were formulated he was able to express them eloquently. Reading about Washington, I miss the grace and humility of our forefathers. Although he began the Revolutionary War with disdain for the soldiers he had to work with, by the end of the war he had so thoroughly bonded with them, they could truly be considered this country’s first ‘band of brothers.’

Young and brash, he was only 21 when he involuntarily launched a world war, the Seven Years war, known in America as the French and Indian war. The death of the French ambassador led to a humiliating defeat at Fort Discovery, a swampy piece of land poorly situated for defense. He learned from the experience but British General Edward Braddock was unwilling to listen.

At the Battle of the Monongahela River, Braddock’s reliance on European imperial battle tactics was defeated by the frontier tactics of Native Americans and the French. Braddock fell back dying while his men deserted en masse. Washington had two horses shot out from under him yet somehow seemed impervious to harm—well, despite the fact that he went into battle exhausted from dysentery. By the time he retired from military service at the age of 26, he’d survived smallpox, pleurisy, malaria and dysentery. For a time he settled into domestic tranquility by marrying the widow Martha Custis in 1757.

The Revolutionary War period takes up the better part of the book, as it should. He served eight years as commander in chief of the Continental Army. By 1780 Washington was stymied by lack of support from state legislatures and “Congressional ineptitude.” He repeatedly had to exhort Congress and the states to remedy desperate shortages of men, shoes, shirts, blankets and gunpowder. This meant dealing with selfish, apathetic states and “bureaucratic incompetence in Congress.” Sound familiar?

After the war, his hopes for a peaceful retirement last only four years, after which he was drafted as president of the convention to devise the Constitution, then essentially drafted as the first President of the United States. He was aware the world was watching everything he did as President and set precedents for the conduct of future Presidents that mostly held.

The best one can say on one subject is that while privately he despised slavery, he was ambivalent about making any effort to eradicate it nationally or on his own plantation. He frequently displayed a schizophrenic application of liberty. One week after the first Continental Congress in October 1774, he sold off property on behalf of his partner George Mercer, including ninety of his slaves. His views evolved in the course of the war; his actions were negligible. The very existence of his plantation, Mount Vernon with its five farms bound him to that ‘peculiar institution’. He was only able to free his own slaves (not the dower slaves from the Custis estate) by writing it into his will.

Partisan infighting is no stranger to American politics. In his second term the press, especially the Aurora, had pretty much declared open season on Washington, denigrating him in ways that would make Fox News blush. In the course of his two terms, he was backstabbed by Jefferson, Madison and Monroe, as well as Thomas Paine, who never learned to tamp down his revolutionary fervor. In his notes on an early draft of his Farewell Address, he complained that the newspapers “teemed with all the invective that disappointment, ignorance of facts, and malicious falsehoods could invent to misrepresent my politics.”

The most important precedent was his decision to step down after two terms. The Presidency is a killer job that wore down every man who answered the call of office. It’s important to remember at that time, in the 18^th Century, no leader had ever voluntarily relinquished power. Not only did he surrender power, he welcomed the relief of that burden, looking forward to the bliss of retirement after two decades of public service.

Washington was not perfect. He took a great deal of time to come to decisions; he often suffered from feelings of inadequacy, both qualities I see in myself; and frankly he had a tendency to live beyond his means. It’s those imperfections that made him strive to better himself, make the best decisions possible. For that we should be grateful he was first in so many things, and that he put country before himself.