Fortunately, his merits become much easier to accept when we learn that he didn't really have wooden teeth! Washington did indeed sport false teeth, but the notion that they were made of wood is as fanciful as the story of the cherry tree. One story has it that his ivory teeth were made from the tusk of a hippopotamus. That may or may not be true, but they were definitely made of ivory. I learned that at the Fraunces Tavern museum. The rest of the information in this article comes from Washington Irving's excellent biograpy of the President.

And by the way, of all the Washington biographies, Irving's is the one to purchase. Irving understands that there is little point in writing about Washington in anything other than glowing terms; and his terms glow like nobody else's. Even a latter-day work of hero worship like Richard Brookhiser's Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington is too bogged down in late twentieth century circumspection to match Irving's glory and high sentence.

And this is important, because Washington was a fine general. It's a fashion among self-styled wits and contrarians like Gore Vidal to disparage Washington's abilities as a commander - as if engaging and beating the most powerful army in the world weren't evidence of competence in the field. The popular notion that Americans fought the Revolutionary War mainly as a dashing guerilla action - sniping at the stiff Redcoats from behind trees - has also tended to diminish the importance of Washington's command. In fact, there was very little of that frontier stuff, and the war was largely fought and won in the European style - with both armies lined up in the field. And it was here that Washington shone, keeping his small and mostly untrained force together through long and demoralizing retreats, scoring small victories like the battle of Trenton, and prudently avoiding big engagements like the battles of Morristown or Yorktown until he was sure of victory.

That prudent attitude gained Washington many detractors in his own day. General Charles Lee disparaged his commander at every opportunity, until Lee himself was captured by the British one morning while still in his pajamas (or "pyjamas," as they said at the time). General Horatio Gates, another Washington rival, entered into a conspiracy to discredit him to the Congress.

As a result, Washington came under tremendous pressure to score a spectacular win and shore up his reputation. But he refused to take the bait, and stuck to his cautious plan until, as Irving puts it "his great qualities [were] fully appreciated by his countrymen and gained for him from the statesman and generals of Europe the appellation of the American Fabius."

And these were difficult times for prudent people. The clash of two English-speaking sides allowed plenty of oppurtunities for spies, and Washington was as hard as anybody when it came to handling double agents. He wasn't, however, quite as stylish in his pursuit of spies as was General Israel Putnam, who when asked by a British commander to turn over a captured agent, sent the following reply:

Edmund Parker, an officer in the enemy's service, was taken as a spy lurking within our lines. He has been tried as a spy, condemned as a spy and shall be executed as a spy, and the flag is ordered to depart immediately.

In other situations, Washington could be exceedingly fair-minded. He was careful not to torment conventional Loyalists, and even took good care of Benedict Arnold's crazy abandoned wife when she accused Washington of plotting to murder her children.

And so on. But really, what is the point of listing all of Washington's many virtues? Irving's book does a better job than I can, and in any event, it shouldn't be necessary to defend the reputation of the man who won the Revolutionary War, helped promote America's first constitutional government, was the original enemy of partisanship, and established the tradition of the two-term Presidency and the impartial Executive office (it was even Washington's idea to be called simply "President of the United States," rather than some bauble-laden honorific like "Most Noble and Exalted Minister of the Republic"). And he did it all so poltroons in the country's third century could make jokes about his dentures, while redefining his birthday as an all-purpose "President's Day" that does no more honor to him than to such Chief Executives as Millard Fillmore, Richard Nixon, Rutherford B. Hayes, and Bill Clinton. But on the topic of Washington's general character, Irving, as always, says it best:

The character of Washington may want some of those poetical elements which dazzle and delight the multitude, but it possessed fewer inequalities and a rarer union of virtues than perhaps ever fell to the lot of one man: prudence, firmness, sagacity, moderation, an overruling judgment, an immovable justice, courage that never faltered, patience that never wearied, truth that disdained all artifice, magnanimity without alloy.

Amen!