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--> --> A presidential lesson: glue it on your forehead By Roger Simon WASHINGTON, D.C. - One of the lasting legacies of Richard Nixon (and you thought he was just a crook) was the scrapping of Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays as national holidays in favor of something called Presidents' Day. Presidents' Day, which falls on Feb. 18 this year, is supposed to honor all presidents, which Nixon must have figured was the only way he was ever going to get honored. This is a shame, because Washington and Lincoln were very special presidents, and it wouldn't have hurt schoolchildren to spend two days a year learning why. So if you are a parent, you may cut this from the paper and glue it to the forehead of your school-age child. (Or you can use a kitchen magnet. For some kids that seems to work.) Simply put, without George Washington, America would have abandoned or never started the office of president. As beloved as Washington was in his lifetime - babies were being christened after him as early as 1775 and people paid money to see a waxwork figure of him - the public loved Washington, the man, and not the idea of a strong executive. Delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 were somewhat embarrassed to debate what form the presidency should take, since Washington was serving as president of the convention and the delegates assumed they were debating his future. But Benjamin Franklin, who supported the idea of a committee as chief executive, urged them to speak freely, and the debate was joined. On June 4, the convention voted for a single-person executive (Washington voting in the affirmative) in part because it would be easier to fix blame if just one person held the job. Nobody knew what to call the new position - "national executive," "supreme executive" and "governor" were all popular - but delegates finally decided on "president," in part because it was the title Washington already had and in part because it sounded unthreatening and not very king-like. Patrick Henry vehemently opposed the presidency anyway, pointing out that by making the president the commander in chief of the army, "a man of ambition" could easily "reign master" over the entire country. "Your president may easily become a king," Henry warned. It never happened - and in no small part because of Washington, whose even temper, vision and lack of personal ambition were nothing short of astonishing. As Sidney Milkis and Michael Nelson argue in "The American Presidency: Origins & Development, 1776-1998," the fear of strong central authority was so great in the United States that "the establishment of the presidency may have been impossible without Washington's great popularity and propriety." In many respects, Washington had to invent the office. How close should he be to the people? Not too close - he would never pander to popular sentiment. But he also created two occasions per week - the president's "levee" for men only on Tuesdays and Martha Washington's tea for men and women on Friday evenings - when any "respectably dressed person" could, without an invitation, be ushered into the presence of the president. How political should he be in filling the nearly one thousand jobs that were now at his disposal? No political patronage, Washington decided. In fact, party politics should have no place anywhere in government. (This idea did not catch on.) Should he attend sessions of the Senate? Washington did so - once. The senators became so unnerved by his presence, however, that they voted to delay the matter he came to see debated and Washington left in a "violent fret," vowing that he would "be damned if he ever went there again." From that day forth, no president has ever consulted the Senate in person. After Washington left office, the presidency was held in so much awe (even as the men running for it were subjected to vituperative attacks by partisan newspapers), that direct campaigning by the candidate himself was considered to be bad taste. Abraham Lincoln made no speeches about any issues during his 1860 campaign for president - and admitted being bored by the entire process. Though Lincoln was elected with just 40 percent of the popular vote in 1860 (it was a four-man field), he assumed extraordinary powers during the Civil War, powers that in ordinary times might have led to charges that he was trying to re-establish the monarchy. But the very fact that Lincoln allowed an election in 1864 - some advised him to postpone it until the Union was more secure - set a momentous precedent that no matter how dire an emergency America faced, the right of the people to render their judgment on their national leader through the ballot box would remain supreme. "We cannot have free government without elections," Lincoln said, "and if rebellion could force us to forgo or postpone a national election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us." OK, that's it until next Jan. 7, when we take up the subject: "Millard Filmore - 13th President or Just a Funny Name?" Roger Simon is a syndicated columnist for the Baltimore Sun. Email your... 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