H.W. Brands
speaker
313 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 12 May
H.W. Brands’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Politics was not his milieu.
He was a soldier.
He was a military commander.
He was really good at that.
He was comfortable in that realm.
He became president upon the urging of everybody he knew, saying, you got to be our first president, because they were looking for a big name.
They were looking for somebody who had a reputation, who could get this new government and the Constitution off to a good start.
And he did that.
And as soon as he could reasonably get away, he did.
He had no desire to stick around and accrue additional power.
Well, Washington gets credit for having served two terms as president and then leaving, setting aside power.
There's nothing in the Constitution, there was nothing in
Habit or norm at that point that said you had to leave after two terms.
I mean, just today, still, members of the House of Representatives can serve forever.
Members of the Senate can serve forever.
Under the original Constitution, the president could serve forever, but Washington didn't.
And he's often credited for having this sense of selflessness that you refer to.
I think in this case, that's overstated because Washington was not attracted to political power.
Other people were, later presidents would be, but Washington wasn't.
Now here I have to say something that probably requires saying to a modern audience, an audience that's used to the idea that the presidency of the United States is the most powerful political office in the world and that the person who is president has enormous power and of course wouldn't want to give it up.
Showing 61–80 of 313 · page 4 of 16
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