OUR VIEW: On Presidents Day, we celebrate the good ones – East Oregonian (subscription)

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President George Washington delivers his inaugural address in the Senate Chamber of Old Federal Hall in New York on April 30, 1789.

Presidential biographers will tell you there are flaws in all of their subjects. But at certain moments, when the chips were down such as the nations birth, the Civil War, World War II the right leader showed up to meet an enormous challenge.

While the scourge of terrorism still threatens America, the abiding enemy of a large share of Americans is change economic and cultural that threatens livelihoods and personal values. In the face of that, its not always clear that current national leaders have a program of substance. Instead, they win by channeling the anger and fear of the disaffected voters.

But that is not leadership. And that is what makes this a dispiriting time.

Disappointment with current elected leaders is disappointment with our times as much as it is about the people in question.

Many years ago, on George Washingtons or Abraham Lincolns birthday, it was traditional for elementary schools to hold programs honoring those hallowed presidents. These days we have Presidents Day.

In many ways, we are more in need of some discussion of Washington and Lincoln than we were in the 1950s. And its not the children who need to hear about the virtues of those great men. Its the adults. Especially the adults who make and administer our laws.

We need to discuss Washington and Lincoln not because they dwarf the presidents we have known in our lifetimes. We need to talk about them because they rose to their tasks at two of the most difficult moments the nation ever faced.

Looking backward, the rise of Washington and Lincoln seems inevitable. The preeminent Washington scholar, James Thomas Flexner, titled his one-volume biography The Indispensable Man.

Oregon U.S. Sen. Mark Hatfield made a similar point about Lincoln, whose life the senator studied in some depth. Lincoln did not feel that he chose his place in history, but rather that history had chosen him, Hatfield said. Clearly no other individual could have brought so much good out of the seemingly infinite seas of madness and blood with which he was forced to deal.

Washington, unique in American history for winning his two terms with unanimous votes by the Electoral College, was widely ridiculed and disliked at the end of his presidency. He faced an armed uprising in 1791. Some blamed his policies for economic disruptions in the nations early years. Washington was a slave owner. He sided with Alexander Hamilton vs. Thomas Jefferson, a conflict that gave rise to continuing ripples of political partisanship that still trouble us today.

Despite his imperfections, with the wisdom of time and a degree of looking backward with rose-tinted glasses, Washington is now justly celebrated for having done most things right.

As the Miller Center at the University of Virginia notes, he tolerated dissent, vicious attacks on his reputation and name, and a divisive press all in the interest of freedom. There is little reason to suggest that Washington, unlike so many of his successors, ever sought to use his office for personal empowerment or gain.

The men including Washington who crafted our system of government understood and explicitly dealt with concerns that presidents could become too important. It is inevitable the top elected job in a great nation becomes the focus for blame and credit. But in the U.S. system of government, the president is a public employee, not the personification of the nation, as was the case in the European monarchy we left behind. The presidency is important but our nation is infinitely more so.

Presidents Day is good time to celebrate the good ones, who manage to govern in ways that promote peace and prosperity. But its also an opportunity to thank even the mediocre and lackluster ones, who often sacrifice health and reputation in efforts to serve the country.

Finally, Presidents Day is a good symbol for the fact that they are only small parts of who we as a nation we give 1/365th of 2017 to honoring them, and many of the remaining days to thinking little of them. This is as it should be.

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OUR VIEW: On Presidents Day, we celebrate the good ones - East Oregonian (subscription)