In September 1796, 228 years ago, President George Washington’s prophetic farewell address was published in Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser, a Philadelphia newspaper.
In the address, Washington announced he would not pursue a third term and cautioned against political parties, vain leaders and permanent alliances with foreign governments.
Increased political polarization, contention over former President Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric and criticism of ironclad relationships with Ukraine and Israel from across the political spectrum suggest that Washington’s concerns have been realized.
“Not only did [the address] accurately capture some of the challenges of the moment in 1796, but those challenges have proven to be quite cyclical, and they’ve come back time and time again,” Lindsay M. Chervinsky, executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library, said.
Washington remains the only president in U.S. history who did not belong to a political party. He viewed parties as potentially destabilizing, according to Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, Edward J. Larson.
“[Washington] said people didn’t vote for the best man,” Larson told Annenberg Media, citing a letter Washington wrote to Connecticut Gov. Jonathan Trumbull, Jr. in which he said people would vote for a “broomstick” if it were labeled a Democrat.
Both major parties continue to drift toward their ideological poles. A 2022 study from Pew Research Center found that 50 years ago, a third of Congressional Democrats and Republicans were moderate, compared to about 4% today.
As a consequence of party formation, Washington foresaw the American people rallying behind an individual who “turns his disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty.”
“The textbook of history seemed to prescribe that [republics] would fail because of excessive factionalism, resulting in the rise of some type of dictator or strong man,” Denver Brunsman, a history professor at George Washington University, said.
Trump opponent Josh Avlon — currently running for a House seat in New York’s first district and author of a book about Washington’s farewell address — suggests the former president is the actualization of Washington’s warning.
“[Washington] was such a — an essentially modest man. I think in some ways what Donald Trump is, is sort of a nightmare image of what democracy could have become,” Avlon said on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” in 2017.
Top Democrats’ recent arguments against Trump echo Washington’s indications of a selfish leader. At the Democratic National Convention in August, former President Barack Obama said Trump “wants the middle class to pay the price for another huge tax cut that would mostly help him” whereas Vice President Kamala Harris has repeatedly accused Trump of killing a bipartisan border security bill earlier this year to benefit his 2024 campaign.
Some Republicans believe Harris has also benefited from party loyalty after Biden’s exit from the presidential race and subsequent endorsement of Harris made her the de facto Democratic nominee. Trump likened Harris’s nomination to a coup and cited her lack of participation in any primary races, while House Speaker Mike Johnson said Democrats “steamrolled democracy.”
“But [Biden] got 14 million votes, they threw him out, she got zero votes, and when she ran, she was the first one to leave because she failed,” Trump said at the ABC News presidential debate on Sept. 10.
Washington also warned that parties could lead to an uprising, and the potential catalysts he lists in his farewell address bear modern significance.
“[Party] agitates the community with ill founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection,” Washington said.
It was widespread misinformation — arguably the modern equivalent of “false alarms” — about voter fraud in the 2020 election that led to an attempted insurrection on January 6, 2021, when Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol building in an attempt to block the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.
Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury for his involvement in the events of January 6 but a July 2024 Supreme Court decision sent the case back to lower court and guaranteed Trump “presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts.”
Chervinsky says the founding fathers disagreed on many issues save for one exception – they explicitly rejected the idea of a king and wanted the president to be held accountable under the law.
“The Supreme Court decision is both entirely inconsistent with Washington’s example and the exact opposite of original intent,” Chervinsky said.
Washington also advised against establishing permanent alliances with foreign governments in his farewell address.
He opposed a clause in a 1778 treaty that required the United States to come to the aid of France if they were attacked by Great Britain. He believed the countries’ constant wars had nothing to do with American interests, according to Chervinsky.
“The nation which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave,” Washington said.
Staunch support of Ukraine and Israel has strained intergovernmental relationships and widened the political divide, both within and between the parties.
Nearly two-thirds of Republicans agree with Israel’s military efforts in Gaza while 75% of Democrats disapprove, according to a March 2024 Gallup poll. The Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war has garnered heavy criticism from Democrats who oppose additional military aid and believe their relationship with Israel has been too lenient, in part resulting in record low approval ratings.
Brunsman says he believes Washington’s stance was particular to the times and not necessarily a warning against involvement in all wars. The general consensus among historians who spoke to Annenberg Media was that because so much has changed, it is impossible to know how Washington would have viewed permanent foreign alliances today.
The Senate has read Washington’s farewell address on his birthday every year since 1862, and ironically the annual reader of the address alternates between parties.