The United States will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the founding document of the country, in 2026. Twenty years later, it will commemorate the 250th anniversary of the farewell discourse of President George Washington, published on September 19, 1796.
Both documents mark the end of the US revolution. This revolution began with the inspiring language of Thomas Jefferson, author of much of the declaration of independence, and culminated with the gloomy warnings of Washington, the first president of the nation.
After presiding over the constitutional convention in Philadelphia and exercising the presidency for eight years, Washington announced in a journalistic essay that it would not appear to a new mandate and that it would return home in Mount Vernon. This essay was later known as the farewell discourse.
Washington began his writing observing that “the choice and prudence invite me to abandon the political scene”, while “patriotism does not forbid it.” The new nation would be fine without its continuous service.
However, Washington’s confidence in the general health of the Union was attenuated by his concerns about the hazards that were coming, concerns that are surprisingly contemporary and relevant 229 years later.
‘Away from permanent alliances’
Washington’s farewell discourse is famous for its warnings of “staying away from permanent alliances” and resisting the temptation to “tangle our peace and prosperity in the networks of European ambition.”
As important as these warnings are, they do not constitute the main theme of the Washington message.
During the four decades that I have taught the farewell discourse in classes on the US government, I urged my students to put aside the family issues of foreign policy and isolationism and read the speech considering the internal challenges facing the United States.
These challenges included partisanship, parochialism, an excessive public debt, ambitious leaders who could take advantage of our differences to get to power, and a poorly informed audience that could sacrifice their own freedoms seeking relief in divisive policies.
Washington’s speech lacks Jefferson’s idealism about equality and inalienable rights. Instead, it offers a realistic evaluation: Americans are sometimes foolish and make expensive political mistakes.
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Government of ‘ambitious and principles men’
According to Washington, the main problem of the US Republic is partisanship.
“It always serves to distract public councils and weaken public administration,” he wrote. The partisanship “agitates the community with unfounded jealousy and false alarms, enlivens the animosity of one part against another, occasionally encourages disturbances and insurrections” and can open “the door to foreign influence and corruption.”
Although political parties, Washington acknowledges, “they can occasionally respond to popular purposes,” they can also become “powerful mechanisms through which cunning, ambitious men and without principles subvert the power of the people and usurpan for themselves the reins of the Government, then destroying the same mechanisms that have raised them to an unfair domain.”
Washington’s fear that partisanship could destroy the Constitution and bring to a government of “ambitious and unimportant men” was so great that he felt forced to repeat the warning more than once in his speech.
The ‘elevation of politicians about the ruins of public freedom’
In his second mention, Washington points out that “the disorders and miseries” of partisanship can “gradually incline men’s minds to seek security and rest in the absolute power of an individual.”
Sooner or later, he writes, “the head of a dominant, more capable or more fortunate faction than its competitors, uses this provision to achieve its own promotion over the ruins of public freedom.”
So why not prohibit parties and stop the dangers of partisanship?
Washington notes that this is not possible. The spirit spirit “is inseparable from our nature and has its root in the strongest passions of the human mind.”
The Americans naturally grouped into factions, interests and parties because that is what human beings do. It is easier to connect with local communities, states or regions than with a large and diverse nation; Although that big and diverse nation is, according to Washington, essential for everyone’s safety and success.
The central problem of American politics are not tortuous leaders, foreign intrigues or sectorial rivalries, things that will always exist.
The problem, Washington warned, is in the town.
Excesses of partisanship
By nature, people are divided into groups and then, if they are not careful, these divisions are used and abused by individual leaders, foreign interests and minorities “cunning and entrepreneurs.”
Political parties are dangerous, but cannot be eliminated. According to Washington, the competition between parties could, within certain limits, serve as a brake on the power of the government.
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But even if the battles between matches sometimes have a useful purpose, Washington was concerned about the excesses of partisanship, which is like “a fire that cannot be extinguished: it demands uniform surveillance to prevent it from becoming a flame, not that, instead of heating, consume.”
Where is the United States today? Heer by the fire of partisanship or consumed by the flames? George Washington raised that provocative question more than two centuries ago, on September 19, 1796. It is still worth raising it.
*Robert A. Strong He is a Professor of Political Science, Washington and Lee University; Principal Researcher, Miller Center, University of Virginia
This article was originally published in The Conversation
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