Historian Unpacks Leadership Lessons From Top Presidents, Washington's Lasting Legacy

Monday marks President's Day, established to celebrate President George Washington's birthday and all former presidents. Reflecting back, what lesson can we learn today from Washington in our nation's history? Joining us now is attorney and historian Talmadge Boston. He's also the author of How the Best Did It, leadership lessons from our top presidents. Talmadge, thank you so much for joining us. Great to have you here now with President's Day almost upon us, marking the birthday of George Washington. Talk to us about Washington's legacy and his ideals for the nation. Well, Washington first and foremost realized that for this new country to survive, everybody involved in government was going to have to be in a mode of unity, and he was a great unifier. He was so incredibly respected by people on all sides that he was unanimously chosen for his presidency, both for his first term and his second term, just as he had unanimously been chosen to be the chairman of the Constitutional Convention and to lead the army as commander-in-chief during the American Revolution. So it's pretty rare for anybody to go through life with all these important positions and no one ever opposed him, and that's because everybody realized that he had the country's best interest at his heart, as evidenced by eight years of leading the Continental Army during the American Revolution. Also a huge part of his legacy is his integrity, that not only was he the commander-in-chief, he was the conscience-in-chief of the country. He was able, in his cabinet, he had Alexander Hamilton on one side as Secretary of Treasury and Thomas Jefferson as Secretary of State, who anybody who's seen the Broadway musical knows that they were not exactly a mutual admiration society, and yet he got them to work together, got them to agree that the Compromise of 1790, that the nation's capital would move down on the Potomac near Virginia in exchange for the federal government assuming the state's debt. So he made government work, obviously, at the very beginning when it was so crucial that it did work. And your book, How the Best Did, it discusses eight presidents. You've said before that your book is a study in applied history. How can we embody some of those excellent traits of past presidents today? Well, we all would love to have our presidents be people of complete integrity like Washington was. We also like to think it'd be great to have a president who's very good at unifying the country instead of dividing the country. We like to recognize that humility is still a virtue, and Washington was, despite all of his achievements, fundamentally humble, and thus he was very collaborative. He recognized that there were other people who were particularly good at things that he wasn't, and so he used them. At the Constitutional Convention, he relied on Madison to be the main draftsman of the Constitution. While he was president, he knew he was not a fiscal wizard. He relied on Alexander Hamilton to figure out how to start and run the nation's economy. So he was very collaborative, and these are all important traits for any successful president. And talk to us about the power of optimism, because you've said before people don't elect pessimists. What do people look for in who to elect? Well, this gets into unifying. Not many people are going to get excited by somebody who's a downer, who's always thinking the glass is half empty instead of half full. Washington believed in the power of the country. He had given so many years of his life to making it all happen, and so he projected this sense that this is going to work, but we must all work together to make it work. People bought into it, and here we have this country almost 250 years later still going strong thanks to its getting off to such a good start. And speaking of unity amidst this increasingly polarized political climate we seem to find ourselves in, what are some lessons we can take from past presidents to find common ground and shared values? Well, you've got to have dialogue, and not only do you have to have dialogue, but people have to listen to each other. And people typically are more willing to listen to each other if they have some sort of a good, positive personal relationship with them. Thomas Jefferson was a real master during his presidency. He entered into the country and was deeply divided, but over the course of his eight years he hosted dinners at his home where he would invite people from both sides to eat great food, drink great wine, but above all have conversations not about the hot political issues, but about their families, their jobs, what their tastes were in literature, music, so forth. He had conversations with people trying to make friends with them, and it worked. He didn't have one a month, or he had two to three dinners every single week, and he didn't achieve breaking the walls down of polarism in a month, or three months, or six months, but over the course of eight years the country came around to his way of thinking. He was a dynamic conversationalist. He was a Renaissance man. He could talk about anything, and so after his eight-year presidency his best friend Madison followed for another eight years, then his little brother figure James Monroe for another eight years, so he got the country turned around toward his way of thinking by building positive relationships even with people on the other side of the aisle, and that has become an increasingly lost art in our national politics. And lastly, very quickly, do you have a favorite president or one you admire the most? Abraham Lincoln's at the top of the list. President's Day is the celebration that Lincoln's birthday was on February 12th, and Washington's on the 22nd, so it's usually a happy medium, but the C-SPAN presidential ranking poll, which takes place every time one president leaves the White House and a new one comes in in the 21st century, Lincoln always finishes at the top of the list for his handling of the Civil War, the greatest crisis in our country's history, and his bringing an end to the evil institution of slavery and doing it all with unequaled eloquence and magnanimity and equanimity, so all of his subsequent presidents have used Lincoln as the ultimate role model who they aspire to follow. Well, Thomas Boston, thank you so much for joining us. It was my pleasure. Thank you, Tiffany.