A Brill Calendar: April 29

"The Spirit of 76"

It is a fact that words change continuously, imperceptibly; even if their lexical form remains identical.

Seen thus, words resemble people; they remain themselves by changing. ‘Panta rhei’, an adage formulated during the dawn of documented Western thought – when the word ‘philosophy’ wasn’t coined yet – is an in-law of this insight. The other half of the dictum – kai oudèn menei’ – is integral part of its wisdom. Naturally, there is a metaphor at work; without metaphors no understanding: an expanse of water, with everything in constant flow, leaving nothing unchanged.

April 29 is a fine day to apply musings like these to the United States of America and its Presidency, particularly if such a furtive look goes back to that calendar day in the year 1789. The owner of a large country estate near Mount Vernon, Virginia, a prosperous gentleman, aged 57 and owning a place in the country, had lodged that day for awhile in New York State. The estate-owner – formerly military leader – is George Washington (February 22 1732, Westmoreland County, Virginia), was waiting for his installation as first ‘President’ of the former British Crown Colonies.

It is seldom that transformation into an unprecedented new political reality can follow an established, prescriptive and well-tested protocol; in the wake of the ‘Spirit of ‘76’ ample political contemplation was given to the possibility of an American Kingdom, including an appropriate monarch, to be imported from ‘Old Europe’.

220 years later, the seed of an idea planted on April 29 1789 in Manhattan, New York had developed into a fixed calendar day in January in Washington, District of Columbia, once every four years, with a predictable precision, seemingly ‘timeless’. No general impression could be further off the mark: ‘Building the Presidency’ proved to be a political process taking more time than a human generation lasts.