By Steve Brawner, © 2019 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

With Presidents’ Day occurring last Monday, this is a good time to recall perhaps the greatest presidential address in American history: George Washington’s farewell address.

Printed in Philadelphia’s American Daily Advertiser on Sept. 19, 1796, it started by explaining why he was not running for re-election – a decision that may have been his most important act. His willingness to give up power set a precedent that has largely guided American presidents and American politics ever since.

He expressed gratitude to his country and then offered what he called “the disinterested warnings of a parting friend.”

He urged the United States to remain united. North and South, East and West, we’re better off knitted together. Americans, he wrote, should be “indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest.”

That’s true then and now. Unfortunately, he left out a word, slavery, which was the cause of that alienation then. Another future president celebrated on Presidents’ Day, Abraham Lincoln, would better explain the problem by declaring in 1858 that “this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. … It will become all one thing or all the other.”

One of the most instructional parts of Washington’s address was when he warned against the “spirit of party.” He acknowledged that such a spirit is “inseparable from our nature.” However, a wise people will nevertheless discourage it. Otherwise, it creates “disorders and miseries” that could lead to despotism.

That spirit of partisanship, he wrote, “serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.”

Any of that sound familiar these days?

Washington also warned his country about accumulating public debt and against “ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear.” At the time, the national debt was in the neighborhood of $83 million.

Avoiding debt requires representative leadership and also public cooperation, he wrote. The nation should avoid “occasions of expense by cultivating peace.” But also, to pay off debt, “there must be revenue; that to have revenue there must be taxes; that no taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant.”

Math in 1796 was the same as math in 2019. If you spend more than you collect, you’ll owe. Unfortunately, neither Republicans nor Democrats have done that math, and neither has the public, so now the national debt is $22 trillion.

Shunning partisanship and avoiding debt are two ways Washington would not fit easily into either of today’s major political parties. There are other examples. Many conservatives would appreciate his writing, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” But they would not agree with his concerns that “overgrown military establishments … are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.” In that case, “republican” refers to the American system of government.

Regrettably, the general public has largely forgotten Washington’s farewell address. It lacks the punch of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, with its memorable “Four score and seven years ago” opening and its stirring “government of the people” ending. Moreover, Washington has faded somewhat in public esteem because he owned slaves and helped create a government that sanctioned slavery.

We can acknowledge those very real failures and appreciate his enormous contributions at the same time. And we can heed his advice about partisanship’s unquenchable fire and the ungenerosity of indebting future generations.

On those especially, we should have listened to George.