[pttttt]

Washington's birthday is February 22.

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[little jeremiah]

later read. Thanks for posting this.

[SkyPilot]

What a contrast in rhetorical grace.

AMONG the vicissitudes incident to life no event could have filled me with greater anxieties than that of which the notification was transmitted by your order, and received on the 14th day of the present month. On the one hand, I was summoned by my country, whose voice I can never hear but with veneration and love, from a retreat which I had chosen with the fondest predilection, and, in my flattering hopes, with an immutable decision, as the asylum of my declining years...

_____________________________________________________________________

When George Washington first took the oath I have just sworn to uphold, news traveled slowly across the land by horseback and across the ocean by boat. Now, the sights and sounds of this ceremony are broadcast instantaneously to billions around the world.

Notice the contrast. George Washington assumed power with humility, piety, and a sense of his own finitude.

Bill Clinton could only pucker up for the cameras, and marvel that he finally had his wish bloviate to the world why this was all about him.

[PatrickHenry]

When I was first honored with a call into the service of my country, then on the eve of an arduous struggle for its liberties, the light in which I contemplated my duty required that I should renounce every pecuniary compensation. From this resolution I have in no instance departed; and being still under the impressions which produced it, I must decline as inapplicable to myself any share in the personal emoluments which may be indispensably included in a permanent provision for the executive department, and must accordingly pray that the pecuniary estimates for the station in which I am placed may during my continuance in it be limited to such actual expenditures as the public good may be thought to require.

He accepted no pay for his services during the Revolution, and he renounced compensation for his services as President.

[Diva Betsy Ross]

*excellent*

[Solamente]

See, everybody strove to speak like that during the Age of Reason, something John Effing Kerry fails to realize.

[StatenIsland]

later read

[Fintan]

 

From what I've read about Washington (including my current bedside reading, "The Glorious Cause" by Michael Shaara), Mr. Washington was somewhat insecure, had no oratorical skills, was not particularly looked upon favorably as a Commander by the Continental Congress, and loved his wife, his lands, and the American cause dearly..

If I may indulge myself here, I would like to quote Mr. Shaara's appraisal of "His Excellency" (a description Mr. Washington abhorred):

    "Not even his dearest friends and most ardent supporters claim perfection in the man. He possessed none of the oratorical skills of Patrick Henry, none of the scientific inventiveness of Ben Franklin, none of the instinct for political science of John Adams. Few claim he was the most expert military tactician, or the most efficient politician. But without Washington, there would have been no Trenton, no Monmouth, and no French alliance. Without Washington, there would have been no General Lafayette, General Greene, or General von Steuben.

    "Throughout the entire ordeal of the American revolution, and throughout the exhaustive historical studies of this time, no other name has risen, no other name  has ever been placed into the same historical arena as George Washington. By his patience, dignity, perseverance, and his unwavering devotion to his cause, he is entitled to claim absolute responsibility for those triumphs that ensured the existence of the United States of America. He is indeed, the Father of His Country."