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July 3, 2002, 2:05 p.m. The Greatest George Washington on the tube. By Matthew Spalding

EDITOR'S NOTE: This appears in the July 15, 2002, issue of National Review.

f there ever was a man made for the movies it was George Washington. He was the action figure at the center of every major political event of his day: the move for independence, the Revolutionary War, the formation of the Constitution, the establishment of the new nation. In each case, he was crucial to the success of the event — and thus to the American Founding as a whole.

Washington was tall and broad-shouldered, and looked the part of a great hero. "I thought then as now that I had never beheld so superb a man," Lafayette wrote upon seeing Washington on the battlefield. Thomas Jefferson said his stature was "exactly what one would wish, his deportment easy, erect, and noble." "You had prepared me to entertain a favorable opinion of him," Abigail Adams wrote her husband after meeting Washington, "but I thought the one half was not told me . . ."

Hollywood could not have written a better story, and Central Casting could not have created a better leading man. In 1984, CBS produced a TV miniseries, based on James Thomas Flexner's great biography, starring Barry Bostwick as Washington; dull in places, it had enough battle scenes to keep it generally interesting. The Crossing, starring Jeff Daniels as General Washington, is a more recent (and more serious) film about the cross-river attack on Trenton.

Both films had merit, but neither quite captured the man or the moment. The problem is that, over the years, Washington has become typecast as the lifeless figure that adorns coins and stamps, and the overfamiliar name on innumerable counties, towns, schools, and streets. In his 1958 biography, George Washington: Man and Monument, historian Marcus Cunliffe wrote that "to humanize Washington is to run the risk of falsifying — of losing the essential truth of his personality," which was that Washington had been replaced by a legendary figure larger and more unwieldy than any mortal. "Entombed in his own myth," Washington had become a monument.

Consider the two standard images of Washington. One is a figure of folklore and legend, the subject of childhood stories and nursery rhymes. What is it that we remember about George Washington? As a boy he chopped down a cherry tree with his hatchet and could not tell a lie. As a man he prayed at Valley Forge, had wooden teeth, and naïvely thought honesty to be the best policy.

The other image is that of a granite statesman who is distant and obscure, an unapproachable patriarch. Think of Gilbert Stuart's famous Athenaeum portrait, the solemn, impersonal, and humorless visage that used to be found in public buildings and schoolhouses: Mark Twain once quipped that if Washington were to return and not look just like the well-known painting he would be rejected as an impostor. "Did anybody ever see Washington nude?" Nathaniel Hawthorne once asked. "It is inconceivable. He had no nakedness, but I imagine he was born with his clothes on, and his hair powdered, and made a stately bow on his first appearance in the world."

Familiarity with the myth and the monument — not to mention the long shadows cast over the era by the likes of Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton — leaves Washington as likely to be the subject of parody as of esteem.

Rediscovering George Washington, a new documentary produced and directed by Michael Pack and written and hosted by Richard Brookhiser, seeks to lift the curtain on the Washington mystery — not by reviewing what we all know, or should know, about the details of Washington's life, but by focusing on why Washington was unlike the other leading men of history. It will air nationally on PBS on July 4.

Behind the actions of the leader is the character of the man. The first half of the film considers Washington's character as a warrior, as a man of charisma, and as a politician, highlighting the best examples of his leadership of soldiers and citizens. A great virtue of the film is how the stories are told: Historian (and NR senior editor) Brookhiser is not some off-screen voice speaking over old prints but an active participant who, along with skilled filmmaker Pack, guides the viewer through the narrative — using music and paintings, sights and sounds, and modern illustrations and events to vivify the tales.

Washington's true character comes out most vividly in the film's second half, which considers how Washington differed from another, sadly numerous category: strong individuals such as Julius Caesar, Cromwell, and Napoleon (to say nothing of Lenin, Hitler, and Mao) who betrayed their nations. What made Washington different? Brookhiser, from whose book Founding Father the film stems, suggests that three key forces were at work.

Ideas: Despite all of the accomplishments of his public life, Washington never wrote a political tract or philosophical treatise. He left it to others to write the articles, pamphlets, and books that are the hallmark of the period. Nevertheless, Washington grasped the best ideas of the time and lived up to them in practice. Others spoke eloquently of republican principles, but his thoughtful actions translated those ideas into political reality.

Manners: Throughout his life Washington worked hard to be the model of a gentleman. His moral sense was the compass of his private as well as his public life; it had become for him a second nature. The genteel civility he came to personify defined a new kind of manners, based not on birth but on behavior, the kind appropriate for republican self-government.

Constancy: Washington followed his best judgment under particular circumstances, often pursuing what seemed at the time a bold course. But in the end, his life was a pattern of decisions and actions that remained true to a set of core principles. Whether it was returning his military commission once the war was over or freeing his slaves and caring for them in his will, Washington always upheld a very high set of ideals.

In short, George Washington displayed the practical wisdom and prudence of statesmanship, guiding his people through the dangers of establishing their own freedom, alive to the difficulties and challenges of founding a new nation. "Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence," Jefferson once wrote of Washington, "never acting until every circumstance, every consideration, was maturely weighed; refraining if he saw a doubt, but when once decided, going through with his purpose, whatever obstacles opposed. His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known, no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was, indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man."

By focusing on the truly great accomplishments and distinctive characteristics of Washington, Rediscovering George Washington points us toward the reasons behind Washington's mythical stature, and the real reason why he will always be in the highest ranks of statesmen. It also reminds us why Washington — and not Madison, Jefferson, or Hamilton — is rightly remembered as the Father of His Country.

— Matthew Spalding is the director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at the Heritage Foundation, and editor of The Founders' Almanac.