How George Washington the Former President Shaped America

How George Washington the Former President Shaped America

Much can be said of the leadership style of George Washington and the list could go on even further. However, the man also had a profound influence on what has become the America we know today.

It is true that some of the things he disliked, like party factionalism, have now taken root in the American daily life but credit must be given to Washington the man where it is due to so do. His legacy cuts across a broad spectrum of areas ranging from the constitution, foreign policy, governance and a host of other areas. (McNeilly, 2008).

On the constitutional front, the U.S. is now, almost with a unanimous reverberation, held to be the model for how a constitutional state should operate. The journey to the American constitution is no doubt long-at times it looked like a futile one- but the contributions to that realization made by Washington cannot be gainsaid.

It is often said that while he might not have done so much into the final content of the document, his mere presence at the Constitutional Conference was more than what was required to help adopt the document. Consistently a nationalist, he presided at that convention by throwing   his weight behind the Constitution’s ratification. He thereafter accepted to be the first president in 1789 and going on to serve one more terms. He would later on work to establish the basic structure of the government with no prior examples to learn from. (Marcus, 1958).

The tradition of American foreign policy being determined majorly by the country’s interest was founded by George Washington himself. At a time when war would have been inevitable due to frontier provocations he chose not to drag America into war not for his mere distaste for war but because the country was not well prepared to take on other powers in those early stages.

Thus in one occasion when war seemed to be the only plausible alternative and this was during frontier provocations, he instead sent Chief Justice John Jay to negotiate a settlement of the differences between the two nations. The terms of the treaty turned out to be very unpopular but Britain was not willing to bulge any more. Washington nonetheless accepted it as the best treaty in the circumstances.