Well, you may call him a career politician. But not me. I call him a tobacco planter, a land speculator, a surveyor and a militia officer who also happened to serve in the Virginia House of Burgesses before the Revolution. That latter service was, however, not a "career" -- not by any stretch of the imagination. It was more like an civic burden.
After the Revolution, Gen. Washington wanted nothing more than to go back to his plantation, live there permanently, and manage its transition from tobacco to other crops. But thanks to pressure from James Madison, Richard Henry Lee and other Virginia gentry, he very reluctantly agreed to preside at the Constitutional Convention.
Then even more reluctantly, he agreed to serve one term as POTUS. At the end of that first term, he was aching to retire back to Mount Vernon. But the looming danger that tensions between the Jeffersonians and the Federalists could tear the Union apart, plus naval threats to the USA from Great Britain and France, were enough to change his mind. So he agreed to a second term.
At the end of that painful second term, GW simply could endure no more strains of the POTUS position. He was truly relieved to be free at last from the life of politics, which he truly detested.
Sadly, he was able thereafter to enjoy only two years of blessed retirement at the old home place. The stresses of life as POTUS probably contributed greatly to his premature death, which happened when he was only in his mid-sixties.
Bottom Line:
Washington was anything but a "career politician." On the contrary, he was not only the leader who more than any other secured our independence and who then held our Republic together during its painful birthing process, but he was also a true statesmen who had a fundamental distaste for "politics."
GW’s death at 67 cannot be considered premature.
In fact it was considered old age in the 1700s.
I wonder what life expectancy was in that century.
Certainly much lower than it is today.
Another way to say it, is to say “George Washington was actually what we could call career, or lifetime politician, he entered elective politics in 1755 and didn’t leave his final office until 42 years later after serving more than a quarter century in various elective offices.
George Washington had vast political experience before he became President of the United States.
Fifteen years in Virginia House of Burgesses.
George Washington served in the Virginia House of Burgesses for fifteen years before the American Revolution. After a failed bid for a seat in December 1755, he won election in 1758 and represented Frederick County until 1761. That year he ran in Fairfax County, winning a seat which he would retain until 1775.
With its origin in the first meeting of the Virginia General Assembly at Jamestown in July 1619, the House of Burgesses was the first democratically-elected legislative body in the British American colonies.
“Three days later Washington joined the burgesses remaining in Williamsburg to sign a resolution calling for a meeting in August which would become the first Virginia Revolutionary convention. The membership of the five Revolutionary conventions was almost entirely made up of burgesses.”
Member of the First Continental Congress.
The first Continental Congress met in Carpenter’s Hall in Philadelphia, from September 5, to October 26, 1774. Virginia’s delegation presented the most eminent group of men in America. Colo. George Washington, Richard Henry Lee, Patrick Henry, Edmund Pendleton, Colo. Benjamin Harrison, Richard Bland, and at the head of them Peyton Randolph — who would immediately be elected president of the convention.
Member of the Second Continental congress.
Washington served as a Virginia delegate to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1775. Facing a fight for independence with Britain, he was elected Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army.
Major General and Commander-in-Chief of the colonial forces against Great Britain.
Constitutional Convention 1787.
When the Constitutional Convention opened in Philadelphia in May 1787, Washington was elected convention president by a unanimous vote, just as he had been unanimously chosen to lead the Continental Army twelve years before.
Presidential election of 1789.
Washington was once again called upon to serve this country. During the presidential election of 1789, he received a vote from every elector to the Electoral College, the only president in American history to be elected by unanimous approval.”