Following up on my post about Washington's wisdom, I've been thinking about the contrast between wisdom and ideology as a basis for making decisions.
One of the notable facts about George Washington is that he pre-dated the emergence of political parties in America. Indeed, his cabinet included both Alexander Hamilton - a committed federalist - as secretary of the treasury and Thomas Jefferson - a committed republican - as secretary of state. (I deliberately do not capitalize these terms.) Although Washington advocated for a stronger central government, it seems to me that he did so not because he thought that centralization was inherently good, but because of lessons he learned as commander in chief of the Continental Army.
From 1775 through 1782, Washington had to cajole the Continental Congress and the states for soldiers, arms, ammunition, food, uniforms, and everything else an army requires. Most of the time these resources were in dangerously short supply: he didn't have enough soldiers, and what soldiers he had were outgunned, clothed in rags, and chronically hungry. Washington experienced first-hand how extraordinarily difficult it was to prosecute a war with virtually no central authority and no executive function. If he was a federalist, he earned it through hard experience.
Contrast this with both Hamilton and Jefferson. Hamilton apparently never met a central government function, initiative, or tax he didn't like, whereas Jefferson was so suspicious of executive power that he perceived a monarchical conspiracy behind almost everything Washington did as president (all the while making increasingly implausible excuses for the violent excesses of the French Revolution).
This is not to say that the politically moderate Washington had no principles. Far from it: as Ron Chernow notes in his biography, "George Washington possessed the gift of inspired simplicity, a clarity and purity of vision that never failed him. Whatever petty partisan disputes swirled around him, he kept his eyes fixed on the transcendent goals that motivated his quest." Primary among those goals was the founding of an independent republic that was answerable to the American people but unified enough to survive and prosper and take its own place among the nations of the world. Thankfully for us, he had the wisdom, tenacity, and strength of character to chart a course to success under extremely difficult circumstances - a nearly miraculous feat that I believe no one else at the time could have managed because they could not check their ideological opinions (and personal ambitions) well enough to provide the requisite level of leadership.
Principled wisdom trumps ideological purity every time.
(Cross-posted at philosopher.coach.)
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