Andrew Sullivan links to a piece by Peter Berkowitz which repeats Gordon Wood’s praise of George Washington’s greatest political virtue:

Washington stunned the world a first time after leading the Continental
Army to victory. Even as many of his countrymen would have welcomed a
military dictatorship under his command, and to the astonishment of
Europeans who could not conceive of a victorious commander doing
anything other than seizing political power, Washington resigned his
commission and returned to his beloved Mount Vernon. He stunned the
world a second time, and for a similar reason: After having twice won
election to the office of what many in the United States and Europe
were prepared to view as a constitutional monarch, Washington announced
that he would not seek a third term as president of the United States.
In both of these acts of splendid renunciation, Washington confirmed
his own public virtue as well as the principles of popular sovereignty
and liberty under law for which his soldiers had fought and bled and
died.

    Twice he walked away from power and, in renouncing political influence, gained greater political influence.  If you read the Tao Te Ching, there is no great surprise in this, since this advice was proffered about 2,000 years before Washington:

In yielding is completion.
In bent is straight.
In hollow is full.
In exhaustion is renewal.
In little is contentment.
In much is confusion.

This is how a sage embraces primal unity
as the measure of all beneath heaven.

Give up self-reflection
and you’re soon enlightened.
Give up self-definition
and you’re soon apparent.
Give up self-promotion
and you’re soon proverbial.
Give up self-esteem
and you’re soon perennial.
Simply give up contention
and soon nothing in all beneath heaven contends with you.

It was hardly empty talk
when the ancients declared in yielding is completion.
Once you perfect completion
you’ve returned home to it all.

          – Passage 22

    Maybe Washington instinctively understood: "give up self-promotion and soon you are proverbial."

    Too bad George Bush can’t quite figure out the Taoist thing.