What We Can Learn from George Washington (And Need to Remember Especially Now)
Among the most frequent voter complaints before, during and since the recent elections centered on alienation of government from the public. Complaints charged officials, from the President to local justices of the peace, with being out of touch with voters – which may explain why 42% severed connection to both political parties and declared themselves independent.
If true, the disconnection between voters and their elected representatives is in sharp contrast with the early days of the public, when our first president (and his friends in high office) thought nothing of striding into the City Tavern in Philadelphia to down a drink with their fellow citizens. And when he traveled, Washington stopped at almost every farm to walk the fields with its owner. Like more than 90% of Americans, Washington himself was a farmer and needed to stay in touch with other farmers to keep up with the latest agricultural advances. As it turned out, keeping in touch with farmers made him a better military commander and president. As commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, he knew enough to rotate farmer-soldier furloughs to let them gallop home for a week or two to plant or harvest their crops. Such temporary leaves not only ensured farmer solvency, they prevented untold numbers of desertions and mutinies and cemented the devotion and loyalty of his troops.
Americans adored Washington because he worked for a living – just as they did – and had a rich private life at home – again, as they did. Washington’s army service was but a temporary obligation – as it was for every other soldier, and, at war’s end, he returned to his family and his full-time job as a farmer. His officers, members of Congress, and other Founding Fathers did the same. John Hancock went home to resume life as a merchant, Noah Webster as a school teacher, Benjamin Rush as a physician, and Alexander Hamilton as a lawyer.
Nor was there much change after the establishment of the new federal government and various state governments. Civilian public service was no different from military service – a temporary obligation of every citizen, much like jury duty today. Congress and state legislatures usually met only twice a year – a month each in spring and fall, with the dates for convening and adjournment strictly fixed in advance. Government service was a personal sacrifice, with pay seldom covering expenses. Few could afford to remain in the national or state capital very long during the year or, for that matter, to continue in government service for many years. Washington served eight years as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army without pay; eight subsequent years as president left him nearly bankrupt.
Like President Washington, members of Congress all had full time jobs at home and had to limit the time and scope of the legislation they enacted to matters of national interest. They had no time to sneak pork into national legislation. National legislation affected the entire nation or it did not pass; Congress invariably refused to violate the Tenth Amendment by considering matters the framers of the Constitution had clearly left to the states. As the Constitution stated, the federal government’s role was national defense, foreign relations, international trade, and interstate commerce – not (as Congress now believes) testing elementary and high school students in reading and math or financing bridges to offshore islands and museums to honor Groundhog Day. After the nation’s First Congress finished passing laws for the government to pursue its constitutionally defined objectives, it shut down and everyone went home to their full-time jobs.
Similarly, state legislatures let town boards handle local matters and focused on intrastate and interstate commerce, improving navigable waterways, and establishing state school systems and institutions of higher education. When they’d passed the necessary legislation, state legislatures shut down and senators and assemblymen returned home to full-time jobs that kept them in touch with their constituents.
In contrast, today’s elected officials are full-time politicians – working, living, eating, breathing and sometimes sleeping with other full-time politicians in either the national or state capital – far away from voters. They usually return home only to campaign. They earn their entire living from politics and are, therefore, motivated to perpetuate and earn as much as they can from their careers. Isolated from public scrutiny in distant capital offices, they are prey to single-interest lobbyists seeking government contracts or public moneys for local roads, bridges, industrial parks, museums, memorials, or, worst of all, a Boston-style “Big Dig.”
In addition to excessive public spending, full-time legislators engage in excessive legislating. Paid full-time to pass laws, they do so full-time – forgetting that each new law – whether it be enabling legislation or proscriptive – necessarily restricts individual liberties. A law that enables some to parade down Main Street deprives others of access to Main Street, reduces merchant revenues, and forces motorists to waste precious fuel bypassing the parade, or worse, idling in a traffic jam. Moreover, the willingness of full-time legislators to pass frivolous laws seduces many Americans into abandoning individual initiative in favor of government subsidies for local projects that benefit infinitesimally small numbers of people.
With each new law, Congress and the 50 state legislatures have gradually woven an increasingly impenetrable web of restrictions on individual initiative and individual liberty. In 1765, George Washington complained that government “hath no… right to put their hands in my pocket…” after Britain enacted the Stamp Tax. He’d be appalled to see government hands today not only in every pocket, but every office, classroom, hospital room and store – and every room of every home, including the kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom. Some government hands reach into every bed to dictate whom may sleep with whom. The time may have come for federal and state constitutional amendments to restrict the scope of legislation that legislators may enact and the length of time they remain in session each year. Sharp pay cuts might then force them into full-time jobs that put them back in touch with mainstream American society.
As Benjamin Franklin put it at the Constitutional Convention, “The pleasure of doing good and serving their country… are sufficient motives for some minds to give up a great portion of their time to the public, without… pecuniary satisfaction.”