Myth-Making

George Washington is successful, in part, because he's tall.

At least, according to Joseph Ellis, he is. Apparently, since Washington towered over a lot of the Continental Congress and tended to keep quiet, they gave him command of the Continental Army. Oh, sure, there are other reasons--the need to bring Virginia's land-owning class into the fray, for example, and the fact that Washington is already pretty well known for his military exploits in the French-Indian War. But Washington's six feet and two inches of apparently impressive stature helps him get the job.

This actually makes sense, given the amount of self-creation that Washington indulges in; he talks his way into a officership in the French-Indian War. He inherits and marries his way into the land-owning class. He knows that silence can speak louder than words. He seems rigidly fixed on self-improvement--one of the only early writings we have of his is a (perhaps copied) list of rules for better living.

And the weird thing about Washington is that all this works--he does become a pretty solid military leader (even if he does lose more battles than he wins), he's the go-to landowner in Virginia (and manages his estates so well that he's one of the few founding fathers not to die broke). In an odd way, he's not just the perfect guy to be president; he's the perfect guy to create the office of president.

We indulge in this myth-making about GW, too. He has wooden teeth, he threw a dollar across the Potomac, he stood in the front of the boat as it crossed the icy Delaware (um, no; it would tip). Maybe that's because there are so many gaps in the Washington story that we have to fill it in with speculation, or maybe it's because so much time has passed since he walked this earth that he's now a face on the dollar bill, a day off in February. It certainly makes this possible (oddly NSFW):



Imagine that with, say, Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan.

Soon: we answer the burning question: What kind of cookies did the Washingtons eat?