This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, July 29th, 2016. I'm Caleb Brown.

The elections involving Thomas Jefferson may end up offering important lessons for the political climate we face today.

Robert McDonald is author of Confounding Father Thomas Jefferson's image in his own time.

We discussed the elections of 1796, 1800 and 1804, and the partisanship that emerged in the early American

Republic. George Washington became president in 1788. Yeah, he was

elected in 1788? Yeah, he was elected in 1788 and decided that after two terms in office and

he had to be cajoled into staying for a second term he decided he was going to leave.

Was it health or what made him decide that?

I think, you know, Washington, as people in office oftentimes did back then protested frequently that he would rather be at home.

He would rather be with his family on his farm, with his books.

I think Washington actually meant it. A lot of times people in office said that to...

I'm going to spend more time with my family. Yeah well and also to cultivate this image of someone who wasn't seeking power.

I mean, power was a scary thing in the 18th century.

The last person you would want to give it to

is someone who actually sought it.

So that was oftentimes the pronouncement that a person in office might make.

Washington was convinced by both Hamilton and Jefferson in 1792 to run again, to stand for office once more, to make himself available for re-election.

And he did, and I think the reason for that was that only Washington in the sort of fractious political environment of the early 1790s

could earn the trust of all and unify the American people.

But by 1796, Washington, I think he thought two terms was enough and he had done enough and he was getting older and indeed if he had run for a third term I'm sure he would have been reelected and

he would have died in office in December of 1799 establishing a very different precedent

than the then you know the one that he did in fact establish by leaving office

...