Mr. Stewart relates a fascinating episode in which a 23-year-old Washington had evidently entered his name as a candidate for burgess of Frederick County, on Virginia’s northern frontier. He made no effort to campaign and failed even to tell his friends of his candidacy. Of course he lost badly. It may have been a mistake, his name entered by friends without his knowledge, or he may have decided against running. I wonder, though, if this was the moment when the young man first encountered the aforementioned reality of democratic politics: If you don’t engage in a bit of self-aggrandizement, you lose.
Washington eventually learned how to campaign, mainly by visiting his constituents and listening to them (the word “listen” and its cognates appear often in Mr. Stewart’s book). He visited cockfights and taverns and weddings and attended the worship services of Catholics and Presbyterians and Quakers.
Washington excelled at showing rather than telling. At the Continental Congress he showed up in full military uniform, rather obviously indicating his readiness to take command of the Continental Army. “Possibly he wore the uniform to show his commitment to the cause,” Mr. Stewart writes, “although the image calls to mind the guest who arrives with a guitar slung over one shoulder, desperately hoping that someone will ask for a song. Yet no delegate seems to have found the uniformed Washington ridiculous.”
After the war, the famously taciturn Washington had achieved a status in American society never before or since equaled. Towns, ships and children were named after him. During the Constitutional Convention, when delegates debated the executive branch, many were reluctant to speak as long as Washington remained in the room, so plain was it that he would be the nation’s first chief executive.
Everybody knows about Washington’s “wooden” teeth. In fact his dentures were made from walrus and hippopotamus ivory, as well as human teeth likely purchased from slaves. (The book’s 16 pages of color illustrations include a photograph of this ghastly device.) “Every morning for years,” Mr. Stewart records, “he had to wedge into his mouth, onto gums raw from friction, a contraption of wire, metal, springs, and ivory that obstructed his speech and slid while he chewed.” Washington was embarrassed by his teeth and, partly as a result, usually kept his mouth closed. John Adams spoke of Washington’s “gift of silence,” and it was a gift, though for him a severe one. “He that keepeth his mouth keepeth his life,” the biblical proverb has it: “but he that openeth wide his lips shall have destruction.” Wisdom for the chattering politicos of our own time.