How Presidents’ Day Grew from Honoring George Washington to Celebrating All U.S. Leaders

It's the time to celebrate an important national holiday which is the (defiantly unpronounceable)

semiquincentennial. To help get into this spirit I've been reading books on the founding fathers

and, in particular, George Washington, someone I was introduced to through a book I wrote

about him several years ago. In the meantime the current president is humming in the distance.

He's a man that is hard to live with and hard to ignore.

Despite the obvious distinctions among Washington as well as Donald Trump in character,

judgment, and significance Presidents’ Day history George Washington There are a few

intriguing similarities. Born rich. Accurate buyers of real estate. Big-house guys. Thin-skinned,

image-conscious. The message of Trump is to Make America Great again. Washington's was ...

Make America.

And Trump ... is... well Trump isn't George Washington. He even tells us that! He is naturally

royalist and proudly self-promotional. He constantly claims to have powers that are not legally

his. He slaps his name on anything that is this other side of the moon and I should probably not

talk about that satellite, in case he gets thoughts.

The choice to name himself chairperson at the Kennedy Center was outrageous enough and then

he placed his signature on the institution. Then, he put his own name in the United States

Institute of Peace which is just several Donald Trump George Washington comparison. His

name is all over D.C. now, on massive banners that hang from the government buildings. He

would like to see Dulles International Airport named in his honor in addition to Penn Station.