President's Day is a chance to look back on our nation's history and remember what makes this country so great.
But it's also an opportunity to reflect on how far we've traveled down the wrong path.
George Washington's First Inaugural Address articulates an emotion that would be almost inconceivable for any federally elected official today: reluctance.
Washington wasn't sure he wanted the job. He answered the call of duty, faithfully serving two terms as our nation's first president.
But he realized that being the President of the United States was not an opportunity to advance his career or pad his pockets. He knew that serving the people was just that: a service.
Here's how he put it.
Fellow Citizens of the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Among the vicissitudes incident to life, no event could have filled me with greater anxieties than that of which the notification was transmitted by your order, and received on the fourteenth day of the present month.On the one hand, I was summoned by my Country, whose voice I can never hear but with veneration and love, from a retreat which I had chosen with the fondest predilection, and, in my flattering hopes, with an immutable decision, as the asylum of my declining years: a retreat which was rendered every day more necessary as well as more dear to me, by the addition of habit to inclination, and of frequent interruptions in my health to the gradual waste committed on it by time.
On the other hand, the magnitude and difficulty of the trust to which the voice of my Country called me, being sufficient to awaken in the wisest and most experienced of her citizens, a distrustful scrutiny into his qualifications, could not but overwhelm with dispondence, one, who, inheriting inferior endowments from nature and unpractised in the duties of civil administration, ought to be peculiarly conscious of his own deficiencies.
In this conflict of emotions, all I dare aver, is, that it has been my faithful study to collect my duty from a just appreciation of every circumstance, by which it might be affected. All I dare hope, is, that, if in executing this task I have been too much swayed by a grateful remembrance of former instances, or by an affectionate sensibility to this transcendent proof, of the confidence of my fellow-citizens; and have thence too little consulted my incapacity as well as disinclination for the weighty and untried cares before me; my error will be palliated by the motives which misled me, and its consequences be judged by my Country, with some share of the partiality in which they originated.
Can you imagine a federal official today voicing the same misgivings?
In 2019, as so many presidential and congressional candidates have recently shown, running for public office is a career move. It's an opportunity to gain power, wealth, and influence, and thousands of men and women pursue it with undignified abandon.
So, this President's Day, let's work to hold our federal officials to a higher standard. Let's remind them who they work for by calling an Article V Convention of States.
A Convention of States can propose constitutional amendments that limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, deincentivizing those who want to use federal office to gain power. These amendments can also limit the terms of office for federal officials, which will further discourage those who see "public service" as a career option.
The Convention of States resolution has passed in 13 states across the nation (most recently in Arkansas), and there's an active grassroots team in your state.
Sign the Convention of States Petition below to show your support!
