As George Washington—military hero, federal advocate, and Virginia aristocrat—prepared to travel north to New York to take up the presidency, he made a decision. In letter after letter throughout 1789, he politely laid out two policies: He would not accept personal petitions for government office, and he would not, when traveling, stay in any private home to which he was invited.
Although Washington framed the former decision in terms of politics, the latter was expressed more in terms of etiquette; he did not wish to “incommode any private family” with his necessary retinue. In fact, however, these two decisions were intrinsically linked. Both stemmed from Washington's preoccupation with determining what a president should be.
The Constitution lays out the responsibilities of the president; what their role is in the government and what it is not. What the Constitution did not determine is the etiquette of the presidency; not what a president should do, but how they should live their lives. Washington, already the greatest celebrity in the early United States, was used to living his life in public, but he was about to start doing so on an unprecedented level. Washington gave himself the task of setting that precedent, of deciding on and living out proper presidential behavior.
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