George Washington turned an army of ragtag troops into an unstoppable force that defeated the British & secured America’s independence. As President, he oversaw the creation of our Constitution & showed the world what it looks like to govern by the people and for the people. Nikki Haley @NikkiHaley Former U.S. Ambassador to the UN. 116th Governor of South Carolina. @ClemsonUniv Tiger. Proud American.

It’s President’s Day and, this year, it seems like a big deal. Every day, the yardage that Trump takes up in our National Psyches shrinks a little, but the sense of the character of the President does matter is not going to go away for a while. When I saw the above obligatory Presidential Day Tweet, above, by Nikki Haley, my first thought was I don’t think Washington really won any battles, certainly not any head-to-head pitched battles, but he had a sterling character.

Britain was the empire and we were the insurgents, the only way to win, in that situation, is to NOT go head-to-head in battle. We ambushed them, we struck at their back from behind trees, and we did a lot of running away. The famous painting above, Washington Crossing the Deleware, shows Washington crossing the Deleware River to sneak up on British contractors on Christmas Eve. Attacking the Hessian mercenaries while they were in their beds on Christmas Eve is not something we would consider honorable if the Taliban did it in Afghanistan. While Washington was far from the first guerilla warrior – although he was probably the first to go into battle in powder blue breaches – he perfected it and brought it into the modern, Western, world. The British, of course, thought it was barbaric – just like we think the Taliban is barbaric – and refused to stoop to their level.

As an aside, both Generals Grant and Sherman worried that the Confederate secessionists would turn to guerilla warfare because that would be the only way they could beat the much stronger Union Army, I suspect that the Southern Aristocracy, like their British forefathers, thought they were above such barbaric killing and preferred to continue to wage a conventional war they couldn’t win. End aside.

I think it is wonderfully ironic that General George Washington, The Father of Our Country, was also the Father of Modern Guerilla Warfare. This President’s Day it is good to remember that George Washington is not great because he built an unstoppable force, he is great because of his groundbreaking act of walking away from the Presidency after two terms. Nobody had ever done that before.

A Belated Happy President’s Day to you.