Lee Harris celebrates President’s Day — Washington’s Birthday — by praising The Father Without a Son:
So here was the problem. Washington had to be given the kind of powers normally reserved only for kings and military dictators — yet it was politically impossible to declare him either one or the other. After all, America was a Republic, and Republics could not be governed by kings or dictators. Therefore, a solution was found in devising an hitherto unheard of office, namely, the Presidency. Though the word ‘president’ had been used before to designate various appointed officials, it had never been used to designate a Head of State.By a stroke of extraordinary good fortune, the man for whom this office was designed was also a man who was profoundly aware of the potential dangers inherent in the office that had been specially designed for him. Washington was keenly aware just how easily the Presidency could degenerate back to a monarchy, or worse; and, shrewd man that he was, he clearly saw that there was nothing in the written Constitution that could prevent such a process from occurring.
For example, there is a remarkable letter that Washington wrote, before assuming the Presidency, in which he argues that he is peculiarly qualified to be President because he has no son. Now imagine a candidate for the Presidency today making such a claim: Vote for me, because I have no son. How strange it would sound to our ears. Yet Washington regarded this as virtually an indispensable desideratum in a President — or, at least, in the first President. Nor is it difficult to see why this mattered to him so much. He did not want the office of the Presidency to become the possession of a dynasty.