Inside the First Presidency: Power, Fear, and the Bill of Rights | The American Story | Ep 9

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Okay, I have to tell you, I was just looking on eBay, where I go for all kinds of things I love, and there it was.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:06)
That hologram trading card, one of the rarest, the last one I needed for my set.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:10)
Shiny like the designer handbag of my dreams. One of a kind. eBay had it, and now everyone's asking, ooh, where'd you get your windshield wiper?

**Glenn Beck** (0:19)
eBay has all the parts that fit my car.

**SPEAKER_5** (0:21)
No more annoying, just beautiful.

**SPEAKER_6** (0:25)
Millions of finds, each with a story.

**SPEAKER_7** (0:27)
eBay, things people love.

**Glenn Beck** (0:36)
George Washington sits alone in Mount Vernon. He's staring into a misty morning, relishing the quiet. Outside, the Potomac River rolls quietly past, indifferent to the weight settling on Washington's shoulders. It's 1788, and he is, at least for the moment, a private man once again, a soldier in retirement, a farmer, a man who's already given everything he had to a country that just keeps asking for more. And today, it's asking again.
Letters pile up on his desk like insistent knocks, friends, colleagues, respected officers from war, statesmen from every corner of the young republic, and all of them are saying the same thing. This fragile new experiment in self-government requires the best leadership. You must be the president.
A heartfelt appeal arrives from France, written in the unmistakable hand of the Marquis de Lafayette, one of Washington's officers and good friends during the Revolution. Washington reads it more than once, maybe because it says what no one else dares to say.

**SPEAKER_8** (1:46)
I beg you, my dear General, do not refuse the responsibility of the presidency during the first few years. You alone can make this political machine operate successfully.

**Glenn Beck** (1:59)
Washington exhales slowly, responsibility, expectation, fear. Though he would never call it that. The public must not think he wants the office. He can't seem ambitious, hungry for power, king-like. He's against a king.
The new Constitution is barely ratified, the ink hardly dry. Americans are anxious, suspicious, terrified of any single man becoming too powerful. And Washington feels every bit of that weight. The pressure campaign is relentless on him. No one is more insistent than Alexander Hamilton, Washington's former aide during the Revolutionary War, now one of the most capable and ambitious political minds in America.
Hamilton is very aware that Washington and his administration would create opportunities, namely a very important opportunity for himself. In August 1788, he writes, It was flattering.

**SPEAKER_9** (3:00)
I think it's interesting to say that it is indispensable you should lend yourself to the new government's first operations. It is to little purpose to have introduced a system if the weightiest influence is not given to its firm establishment in the outset.

**Glenn Beck** (3:14)
It was flattering. But the quiet life of Mount Vernon held a lot more appeal to Washington.

**SPEAKER_10** (3:20)
As he replied, On the delicate subject with which you conclude your letter, I can say nothing. For you know me well enough, my good sir, to be able to say that I am a man of great value, and I am a man of great power. I am a man of great power. I am a man of great power. My good sir, to be persuaded that I am not guilty of affectation when I tell you, it is my great and sole desire to live and die in peace and retirement on my own farm.

**Glenn Beck** (3:45)
James Madison, Washington's quiet, brilliant, somewhat bookish neighbor from Virginia, adds his voice. He warns that if Washington refuses the whole project, the Constitution, the new government, everything they built, everything they fought for, could fail before it even begins.

**SPEAKER_10** (4:03)
And Washington admits to Madison, To be shipwrecked inside of the port would be the severest of all possible aggravations to our misery.

**Glenn Beck** (4:13)
So, Washington sits, holding these letters, knowing that if he accepts the presidency, he's stepping into a storm no one has ever faced before. A government with no roadmap, a people on the alert for signs of a monarchy, a world waiting to pounce on failure.
He looks out over his farm. It's the place he loves more than any battlefield, any council chamber, any capital city. And he understands, if he says yes, his life will once again no longer be his own. Washington closes his eyes, and in that moment, he knows. He's under no illusion about how difficult it will be.

**SPEAKER_10** (5:02)
I should consider myself as entering upon an unexplored field, enveloped on every side with clouds and darkness.

**Glenn Beck** (5:11)
America is about to choose its first president. But before the election, before the inauguration, before the fireworks, the parades, the prayers, there is this moment.