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U.S. presidents have followed the example of George Washington for more than 200 years.

The cabinet of advisors to help run the country, the tradition of the state of the union address,

and the two-term limit which all that FDR adhered to even before the 22nd Amendment.

But there is one important component to Washington's presidency that his successors did not share.

Washington really didn't want the job.

From KERA in Dallas, this is Think.

I'm Chris Boyd.

His fellow founders understood that Washington would bring a sort of gravitas to the new government they were building at the Constitutional Convention.

As my guests will tell us,

our first president had to be talked into even attending that gathering in 1787, not least because

he defined himself not as a politician, but as a soldier. But when duty calls, a good soldier responds.

H.W. Brands is Jack S. Blanton's senior chair in history at the University of Texas at Austin.

His newest book is American Patriarch, The Life of George Washington. H.W., welcome back to think.

Nice to be with you, Chris.

The word patriarch is a little bit freighted these days. You mean it in the finest, most honorable sense here, I gather.

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