Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - NYT Bestselling Historian: Why George Washington Was the Greatest Leader Who Ever Lived — H. W. Brands

Episode Date: May 12, 2026

George Washington didn't just win the American Revolution; he invented what it means to lead with honor, and my guest today, award-winning historian H.W. Brands, is going to tell you exactly why this man, who could have been king, chose to walk away. On this episode of Open Book, we're going back 250 years to find out what Washington got right, and what we owe it to him to protect. H.W Brands holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History at the University of Texas at Austin. He has written more than a dozen biographies and histories, including The General vs. the President, a New York Times bestseller. Two of his biographies, The First American and Traitor to His Class, were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. I am a massive fan of Professor Brands and think you should all pick up a copy of his new book, American Patriarch: The Life of George Washington, today: https://amzn.to/4d5L6UQ Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge, a global alternative investment firm, and founder and chairman of SALT, a global thought leadership forum and venture studio. Pre-order my next book, All the Wrong Moves: How Three Catastrophic Decisions Led to the Rise of Trump, out on the 17th of September in the UK and the 22nd of September in the US: ⁠https://www.scaramucci.net/allthewrongmoves Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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free of charge. BetMGEMGEMP operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. morally head and shoulders above them and above everybody else. He's also seen as somebody who set aside personal interest to take up command of the continental army. He agreed to serve without pay. And in fact, he lost a lot of money as a result of the American Revolution. He lost a lot of money from the time he spent as president of the United States.

But he was willing to do that. It really had to do with this code of honor that Washington established for himself. He said, this is how an honorable man behaves. He puts the interests of his country ahead of the interests of himself. He was a master of silence. He was surrounded by people who were just in love with their own voices. And so Hamilton, you know, Jefferson, Madison, everybody at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, this is a whole bunch of lawyers and politicos who go and they meet in this room

for four months during the summer of 1787. And they're debating, debating, debating, and Washington is sitting there. But he says not a word. And precisely because he is so silent, people who think he must be deeper than he is. He knows more than he is saying. They all sort of lowered themselves to the same level of competing voices. Where is Washington's silence put in above them? Welcome to Open Book.

Joining us today is best-selling author, award-winning historian, H.W. Brands, the title of the book, American Patriarch, and it's the life of George Washington. And what a great book. And Professor, I have to tell you, I am a huge fan of yours. I've read several of your books. most recently, and you wrote it a while back, a traitor to his class. What a great title that was to.

And this is also a great title. But these are consequential figures. Roosevelt, wrote about Reagan, of course, Ben Franklin. Why George Washington now? Well, I confess that I was aware that America was approaching. It's 250th anniversary of independence. And there would be interest in the people who got it all started. except I'd been thinking about Washington for a long time.

I've written around Washington. I've never been writing directly on Washington as the subject of a biography. And part of it was I just couldn't quite figure him out. So I thought finally I would take a shot at it. Did you figure him out, sir? I think so. I think so.

So what did you figure out? Go ahead. Tell me about the man that I was told could never tell a lie who told his dad that he chopped down the cherry tree, the father of our country. It's such a great title, by the, we'll get to the rationale behind the title book. Tell me, tell me who I should be thinking of when I hear George Washington and what I learned about when I was in kindergarten. So Benjamin Franklin,

a contemporary of Washington's, was often called the archetype of the self-made American. In some ways, Washington was the same, same sort of approach. Ended up with a different product. but Washington became the person he thought he should be. As a young man, he developed this sense of the kind of reputation he wanted to have. He was ambitious, but he didn't know exactly what his ambition was for. He was also, and this is very significant, he was well off. He was a member of the Virginia gentry, and I spent some time in the book talking about what this meant, who these people were.

and it was a class of people that lived, well, in large part, by the labor of other people, including their slaves, but it was also a class that lived by a code of honor. And for them, the respect of others, the admiration of others was a really big deal. And Washington, he wasn't the eldest child, he wasn't going to be the inheritor of the biggest state. He was going to have to make something of himself. And what he decided to make of himself was this person, that people could look up to, that he himself could look up to. So he had this idea of the kind of character he wanted to be. He wanted to be admired. He wanted to be respected. And the way to do that

was to do the things that would make people admire you and respect you. And so he set for himself this model of the person he wanted to be, and to a large extent, that's the person he became. You know, when I think about these figures, whether it's Jackson, Grant, FDR, Reagan, I feel like all of these figures were influenced by Washington. Am I right to think that? Yeah, except that I'm not sure how deeply they were influenced by Washington

and what aspect of him. If you're going to be a president, and I've written on several presidents, you're aware that Washington is the first and the one who set many of the precedents. I think that if you were after Washington, though, there are things that you could model yourself on, but they probably wouldn't get you

to where you wanted to go. in politics. Because one of the points that I make in the book is that Washington helped create the American Republic. And it had a style of politics. We're competitive. Sometimes they were often partisan and bitter and nasty. Washington himself would not have thrived in that political realm. If Washington had had to run for president, if he had to compete for the presidency, he never would have done it because that was not his style. Politics was not his milieu. He was a soldier. He was a military commander. He was really good at that. He was comfortable in that realm. He became president upon the urging of everybody he knew, saying you've got to be our first president because they were

looking for a big name. They were looking for somebody who had a reputation who could get this new government on the Constitution off to a good start. And he did that. And as soon as he could reasonably get away. He did. He had no desire to stick around and accrue additional power. No, the reason I say this is sort of about this ethos of service and an ethos to the commitment of keeping the country together. I mean, you can talk about where we are today in our history, but I felt like when I finished your book and took a deep breath, I said, what is this about? this was about a man who obviously wanted the respect of the people around them, but wanted to be remembered for service with a level of selflessness to it, right?

You know, we all talk about Cincinnati when we talk about Washington, and we all talk about his willingness to leave power, right? Isn't it important to assume power or be responsible for it, Bill, but then also to be willing to leave power, right? And these are the things that we learn from Washington, right? Well, Washington gets credit for having served two terms as president and then leaving, setting aside power. There's nothing in the Constitution. There was nothing in habit or norm at that point that said you had to leave after two terms.

I mean, just today still, members of the House of Representatives can serve forever. Members of the Senate can serve forever. Under the original constitution, the president could serve forever, but Washington didn't. And he's often credited for having this sense of selflessness that you've been. refer to? I think in this case, that's overstated, because Washington was not attracted to political power. Other people were, later other people, their presidents would be, but Washington wasn't. Now here I have to say something that probably requires saying to a modern audience, an audience that's used to the idea that the presidency of the United States is the most powerful political

office in the world, and that the person who is president has enormous power. And of course, wouldn't want to give it up. But the presidency back in Washington this day, when he became the first president, it was no big deal. The United States had had presidents before Washington, but nobody's ever heard of them because the presidents under the Articles Confederation in the Congress were almost irrelevant. They were simply presiding officers over the Congress. So this new president, it was a new thing. But Washington, even if it had been a bigger deal, Washington himself had no attraction to political power. He was, what do you really want to do is get back to Mount Vernon and go back to his farm. Again, there's so much in the book and so much, frankly, I have to confess, I see myself as a student of history, but I missed a lot. So I'm going to say a few things to you and get your reaction to them and you'll tell me whether if I've got it right, I think of these two non-politicians, Washington and Alexander Hamilton, and they form one of the great political partnerships in American history, right? There's almost like a father's son dynamic, one is a strong,

or one is an aristocrat. I guess the question I have for you, sir, is there a Washington without Hamilton? Oh, there would have been Washington without Hamilton because it hadn't been Hamilton. It would have been somebody else. Washington was a powerful figure, and people were drawn to him because he had power.

Hamilton was one, but there were others. Marquis Lafayette was another one, and who came from a very different background than Hamilton. I think, I mean, you identify this very important relationship, and you're absolutely right. Hamilton was the striver. Hamilton was the one who came from nothing. He had intelligence.

He had ambition, but he had no springboard. He had no start. And so everything he got, he had to win for himself. And what he saw in Washington, first of all, was an opportunity to get on the ladder and to rise from the ladder. It's hard, I have a hard time understanding what's really moving Hamilton

because I have a great deal of different occulting Hamilton's ambition from Hamilton's emotions. Now, it was that ambition that got him to where he wanted to go. But there came a point when, I mean, this is very much like Hamilton, although it sounds pretty bold for somebody as young as he was, and he was very bold. Hamilton felt that he outgrew Washington and that Washington, he helped get Washington the presidency, and now Washington made him the secretary of the treasury, and he's going to propose all these ideas. It's going to make the executive branch really strong and powerful. But Washington isn't as enthusiastic as he is. And eventually, Hamilton decides to bail out of the administration so he can

essentially go off into politics on his own. Thank you for tuning in an open book. And if you haven't already, please hit the subscribe button below so that you're the first to know when our new episodes drop each week. We've got a lot more coming. And now back to the show. Yeah, I guess the reason I asked the question the way I did was what I learned from you, is, you know, he's considered to be one of the key architects of the financial system and the structure of the system. But I feel like Washington lent his support and prestige to him and sort of chose that model over the Jeffersonian or the Madison model.

And so I guess let me reframe the question. Why do you think Washington did that? Because those other two thinkers are more towering, in my opinion, than Hamilton. So part of it had to do with the fact that Washington. was no Democrat in a small D. He didn't believe that ordinary people had the capacity to govern themselves. He was an aristocrat as president. And it's one of the reasons the Washington model has limited value for subsequent presidents who preside in an age of democracy. So Washington was looking for those institutions, those developments that would give greater energy to the executive

branch. Now, Hamilton was a very keen thinker on economics, on finance, on banking, and all this stuff. Washington was not. Washington knew how this stuff worked, generally speaking, but here again, it's worth taking ourselves back in time to an age before there were banks. There were almost no banks in the United States, and nobody knew what banks did. And Washington hardly had any dealings at all with banks. When he needed money, he borrowed money from his agents in London. And he worked through that, but through the banks, he was willing to take Hamilton's word on a lot of this stuff. Washington was not a student of economics, a student of financial institutions. But he did have great faith in Hamilton, in Hamilton's intellect.

I don't know how much he trusted Hamilton's judgment or even Hamilton's character. But he found that Hamilton was a very useful subordinate, a useful lieutenant, because he was smart, he was a quick study, he would do things, you know, fast. get all sorts of things done. You know, again, this is us looking back on Washington, all these things named after him. You know, I grew up in a town called Port Washington. It was named after the general. Apparently he courted some troops there.

I don't know if it's true or not, but they named it after him. But I feel like you left me with this impression that his contemporaries saw him as this towering. We see him as a towering figure, but I feel like his contemporaries did. So I want you to roleplay for me, if you don't mind, Bill. Be a contemporary of Washington and describe him in the words that his fellow contemporaries would have thought of him at that time.

Nearly all of them thought that Washington stood morally head and shoulders above them and above everybody else. Benjamin Franklin was an exception to this. And again, here's something we're noting. Washington was a generation older than nearly all of the other founders. Actually, he was a generation younger than Benjamin Franklin, but those two. They were very much older. And this is one of the reasons he is seen as this father figure.

But he's also seen as somebody who set aside personal interest to take up command of the Continental Army. He agreed to serve without pay. And in fact, he lost a lot of money as a result of the American Revolution. He lost a lot of money from the time he spent as president of the United States. but he was willing to do that. And it really had to do with this code of honor that Washington established for himself

that I mentioned earlier. So this is how an honorable man behaves. He puts the interests of his country ahead of the interests of himself. And he carried that off. And the fact that he does it by design doesn't make it any less sincere. This is a standard to which he holds himself.

Now, there was some other traits of Washington and some of his habits. that made him seem above everybody else. He was a master of silence. He was surrounded by people who were just in love with their own voices. And so Hamilton, you know, Jefferson, Madison, everybody at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, this is a whole bunch of lawyers and politicos who go and they meet in this room for four months during the summer of 1787.

And they're debating, debating, debating. And Washington is sitting there. He's the presiding officer of the convention, but he says not a word. And precisely because he is so silent, people think he must be deeper than he is. He knows more than he is saying. And we're just around here. They all sort of lowered themselves to the same level of competing voices. Whereas Washington's silence put him, it seemed, above them.

There's a hard chapter in this book, by the way, and you are unsparing in this chapter. This is the chapter on slavery. And when I read the chapter, first of all, I was impressed with the detailed research that you did. Tell us a little bit about that and tell us how do we hold these two facts together without excusing Washington but also without flattening him. And we have these two, this towering magisterial figure and this slave owner. tell us about how you handled it in the book, which I think you frankly did brilliantly, sir. Well, one of the things I will say is I write history in order to make the people of the past understandable to people in the present.

And the way I do this is to show the world through their eyes. So this is what Washington was thinking, this was Washington, is saying this is what Washington was doing. I make a point, in contrast to many other historians, I make a point of not standing in judgment over my characters. I will tell you the readers. I'll tell you what he did, what he thought, what did that. If you want to make a judgment, you can't. I'm not going to. And so I'm going to give you enough information so you can make whatever a judgment you want. But in answer to this question, we've got this towering figure on the one hand and a slave holder on the other hand. And I would say

that in Washington's day, those two were inseparable. If Washington had not been a slave owner, he would not have achieved what he achieved. And the reason I say this is that, that, that if you lived in Virginia in the 1770s, 80s, and you were a person of means as he was, then you had slaves in your workforce. If you were a big planter, they worked in your fields. If you were a gentleman who didn't have much property, they still were your servants. That's what the labor force consisted of. And if you had decided that, okay, this is immoral and I got to end it,

and you decided you're going to turn your back here, you're going to free all your slaves, and you would have nothing to do with the institution of slavery, then the political institutions of Virginia would have nothing to do with you. You would have been seen as an eccentric, as a crazy person, a person who could not be trusted. And so you can't have the one without the other, and that's simply a function of the times.

Now, Washington himself, as far as I can tell, as a young man, in particular before the American Declaration of In Venice, because this is a critical moment. thought very little about slavery as a moral question. This is just the way the world worked. The world has good stuff in it. The world has bad stuff in it. We get sick, we die.

There are wars, their plagues is all the stuff. Slavery is on the negative side. But Washington and many others would have seen it as a necessary evil. We can't run the economy of Virginia without slaves. So there it is. Nobody wants to be a slave who's not a slave, but nobody wants to die early either. So there's that part of it. But once the United States establishes a republic, once Washington's fellow Virginia,

Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence says all men are created equal and highlights the fact that Americans are fighting for their freedom. And Washington himself says that unless we stand up for our rights, we will be no better than slaves. And when I first read this from Washington's hand, I thought, gee, George, that's awfully rich. You know, you're talking about you being enslaved by the, what, the tax? policies of Britain. You own the slaves, guy. You know, you really know what slavery is. And at first I thought this was just kind of a figure of speech or something. But what he really

meant was that we will not be the masters of our own destiny. And just as real slaves are not masters of their own destiny. See, the essence of slavery was you don't get to decide what you will do. And Washington was saying Americans would not get to decide what they would do if they failed to resist these illegitimate British laws. So anyway, but once the United States begins fighting for its freedom, Washington realizes the contradiction. He's not alone.

You realize the contradiction between slavery and this freedom that they're fighting for. I'll add something else here. Before American independence, it was not within the legal or political capacity of Americans to end slavery because they lived under British law and British law was made far away in London

and the British had no desire to emancipate the slaves in the Western Hemisphere. But now that Americans could, and Americans did, start freeing their slaves, state by state. Pennsylvania went first in 1780 in the other northern states. Washington hoped that Virginia would come to that. It was a bigger deal for Virginia. There were a lot more slaves

and slaves are more central to the economy. But Washington was trying to figure out how he could get out from under the slave system. He couldn't do it as long as he was present because for the reasons that I said, if he came out against slavery, then he would lose all of his credibility among the very important slaveholders in Virginia and the other southern states. But after he retired, in fact, even while he was president thinking about retiring, he was trying to figure out how he could eliminate slavery as a part of the way he

operated his system. Now, with Washington, there's an important complication. This comes out in his will because he decides that he's going to be. to free his slaves upon his demise. Except that his wife Martha was really the owner of most of the slaves at Mount Vernon, except even technically she wasn't the owner. She was the trustee of the slaves for the children of her first husband. And so if Washington had wanted to free most of the slaves in Mount Vernon, he didn't legally have the power to do it.

Neither did Martha because of the will of her first husband. So he did what he could. He freed the slaves that he owned himself, not upon his death, but upon Martha's death, because there was going to be this very difficult complication if half the slaves at Mount Vernon became free and the other half remained slave. The ones who remained slave,

they would be sorely tempted to join the free ones and flee the place, and Martha would have to deal with that mess. Now, listen, the book is fascinating on so many different levels, you explained to us why he is so consequential in the actual survival of the country and the formation of the republic. My last question before I get to the five words, and it's not a political one, sir.

This is just more of an observation. So you don't have to, I'm not asking him for politics. If Washington were to walk into the Oval Office today, what would he recognize about the presidency? And again, I'm talking about the institution of the presidency and the powers associated with the presidency. So what would he recognize about the presidency and what would he not recognize or potentially be horrified by? And again, I'm over emphasizing this, but to make the point, not political, just more about how the presidency evolve and the powers associated with. He would be absolutely amazed and he might be appalled at the strength of the presidency.

Because under the Constitution that Washington helped write, the presidency appears only in Article 2 of the Constitution. Congress is an Article 1. Right. And so Congress was going to take the lead. Congress was going to have the initiative in American politics, which it did during Washington's life. And for another 100 years, it's really only in the 20th century that the executive branch jumps to the front. So he would have been surprised at how powerful the president has become. And he really would have been appalled at how weak the Congress has become.

Because the whole idea was to have this government really of the people, not just as one person, but the ones the elected represented. So he would have been stunned at that. He would have been probably equally appalled at the fact that, I mean, as we speak, there are American soldiers stationed all around the world in America is fighting wars in distant lands. He was the one who in his farewell address

said to his fellow Americans, don't get overly involved in the affairs of other country. Precisely, precisely. So Washington would have acknowledged the world changes, but the idea that somehow the United States would feel it incumbent on itself, that presidents would feel an incumbent on themselves, to engage in wars halfway around the world. This really would have taken it by surprise.

Okay, so we're at the point in the show, sir, where my producers and I took five words out of your book, and I took a little bit of liberty a year because I've read some of your other books, so I've added a few words from not necessarily the book. Okay, so the first, and so what I'm going to do is I'm going to do is I'm going to say the words, and then you give me a sentence or two. Okay, you ready? Sure.

All right, so let's start with Teddy Roosevelt. Okay, and when I say something about Teddy Roosevelt, does it have to do anything with George Washington? It just has to do with you and you. Well, okay, actually, I will say this. Teddy Roosevelt greatly admired George Washington, and Teddy Roosevelt imagined that he could become a president as consequential as George Washington. Franklin Roosevelt. Franklin Roosevelt. Franklin Roosevelt knew full well when he ran for president in 1940,

that he was breaking the unwritten rule that Washington had established, and he did not do it as a way of showing disrespect for Washington. Instead, he sought as a way of safeguarding the United States during this crisis that was coming with the Second World War. Well, I mean, in that book, Trader to his class, I thought you did a brilliant, of explaining that dilemma and also explaining some of the Democratic adversaries that Roosevelt had that he had to work through before he got himself back up to the nomination. I mean, one of the things to bear in mind, and this has to do with why we do have a 22nd Amendment, writing to the Constitution, they only get two terms. It wasn't simply the Republicans, the other party that was upset that Franklin Roosevelt never left the White House. It was fellow

Democrats, because they had been patiently waiting their turn. You know, you get two administrations, two terms. But then you got to step aside so other deserving Democrats can have a shot. There's a great scene in that book that you, I mean, and Susan Dunn also references it in her book where him and Farley, you know, Farley thinks he's going to be the president. Yeah. And Roosevelt, let's just put it this way, he's wicked mad at a, it's off the phone with him and he's having a rally. Yeah, part of the problem is that what Roosevelt saying the same thing to Jack Garner, who was the vice president. He's like them both think they're going to be next precedent.

You did a really good job in that book of explaining the enigmatic personality of Mr. Roosevelt and how he was able to play people against each other. But I really love that book. All right. Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan in some ways has was to the modern Republican Party, what George Washington was to the American Republic. because Ronald Reagan was this figure when he was present during the 1980s and for 10 or 15 years after there, that this was the guy who represents the best of what the Republicans can put in the presidency.

And for a long time, you know, Ronald Reagan was the touchstone of American Republican politics. Things have changed now. So the Republican Party has moved on past Reagan. And in some ways, may, of course, American politics move past George Washington. So we still pay lip service to George Washington, although we don't do things the way Washington did. And Republicans and other Americans today still pay lip service to Reagan, but do things very differently. Okay. Benjamin Franklin was one of the two, George Washington being other, the other indispensable men of the American Revolution. Washington handled the military front. He was commanding general the continental army.

Franklin handled the diplomatic front. He was the one who had the diplomatic front. He was the one who, got the all-important alliance with France that made Washington's work a whole lot easier than it would have been without it. And their relationship, sir, how would you describe their relationship? They spent very little time together. They ran into each other only officially. So they didn't have a friendship, but they had a radial of respect. And the correspondence that I get between Franklin in Paris and Washington in the battlefield, when Franklin is sending people who are volunteer to join Washington's army. And Washington is sometimes saying thanks for these good people you're sending over, sometimes saying what you're sending over too many, we can't use them.

But when Franklin introduces the Marquite de Lafayette, you know, so take care of this young guy. And he's the one who introduces Lafayette to Washington. And that becomes a wonderful relationship, both for Washington and Lafayette and for the United States, indeed for France, too. Okay, I'm going to give you the last word, and my last two words are George Washington. So give us a few sentences as we close the book, the American Patriarch. What are we to think of our founder? George Washington, above all the other people of his generation, got this country out to a really good start. Without Washington, it might have happened, but it would have happened differently.

Probably would have happened slower. We're 250 years out from what Washington accomplished. And we've managed to keep this experiment, self-government going for 250 years. And if forever Washington might be, you know, looking down on us forever, you know, just out of respect to him, we need to do our best to keep this experiment going. Yeah. So I think that's the reason you wrote this book. Okay.

And I think you picked this subject and you timed it for this anniversary because you want to give people a message from 250 years ago, how sacred the place is and to be reminded. of the types of people that helped form it so that we can try to get back to some of that and keep it together. How much of that do I have rights? Well, if it does have that effect, I will be greatly satisfied. Well, I had that effect on me. And so the title of the book, American Patriarch, The Life of George Washington by H.W. Brands, award-winning historian. And it's just a phenomenal read. I really enjoyed it. And I hope you'll come back for your next work.

Okay, thanks, Anthony.