You have George Washington all wrong: Why he was more like Reagan or Clinton than you think — salon.com

In a time when the foundational institutions of the U.S. government seem more broken than they’ve been in more than 100 years, Americans can be forgiven if they find themselves irresistibly drawn to histories of the founding era, when the mighty democratic republic we know today was little more than a dream. Yet for all the veneration and deification of the men and women who won the Revolutionary War and drafted the U.S. Constitution, most Americans are blinded by the perspective of hindsight, and often forget just how much a product of good fortune and luck their country really is. From the perspective of someone living during the chaotic years between the end of the war and the ratification of the Constitution, nothing felt guaranteed.

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