This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, July 26, 2013.

I'm Caleb Brown.

George Washington was the easy choice to lead the Continental Army,

and after the war he was the easy choice to become our first president.

Rob McDonald is an associate professor of history at the United States Military

Academy and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute.

We talked about our first president and his role at the founding at Cato Institute. We talked about our first president and his role at the founding

at Cato University in 2012.

George Washington is historically remembered as our greatest president, but he's our greatest president, according to

historians, at least to my estimation, for not clinging to power to understanding

that his role as president was limited, but of course he was also the

leader of our continental army during the Revolutionary War.

What was his role in getting that revolution going?

What was his role before that?

Well, I think one of the reasons Washington was selected as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army

by the civilian legislators of the Continental

Congress is that he was one of them. You know he spent the bulk of his life as

a plantation owner but also as a member of Virginia's

House of Burgesses, Virginia's legislature. As a very young man he was a

member of Virginia's militia. He was a 23 year old colonel, very high

rank for 23 year old who served in the opening scenes of the French and Indian

War.

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