George Washington understood the stakes. “As the first of everything,” Washington wrote, whatever he did, substantially as well as stylistically, would “serve to establish a precedent.”

In 1790, the first full year of Washington’s presidency, John Adams captured the cultural as well as the political significance of the office, writing: “His person, countenance, character, and actions, are made the daily contemplation and conversation of the whole people.” Adams’ great rival Thomas Jefferson agreed. “In a government like ours,” Jefferson wrote, “it is the duty of the Chief-magistrate, in order to enable himself to do all the good which his station requires, to endeavor, by all honorable means, to unite in himself the confidence of the whole people.”

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