Thanks. It tells me we need to go all the way back to 500 BC to find another example.

It shows how rare this is.

Or it shows us that it's relatively rare that someone gets the opportunity to pass up power in this sort of fashion.

More often what happens is that leaders make small and often imperceptible choices to not amass more power over time, and that series of choices prevent the scenario like what you're describing from occurring.

Everyone offered power has the opportunity to deny it.

Can you name a US President, other than Washington, who reduced the power of the Presidency? All the ones I can think of increased it.

It's true that the example of George Washington is extraordinary not just in American history but globally. I think however that focusing solely on American presidents, or only those who were explicitly offered absolute power constrains the conversation about what real leadership can be.

Passing up absolute power isn't the only way that a leader can show humility and grace, true leadership is more subtle and is expressed in the day to day decisions that a leader consciously makes which strengthen institutions rather than consolidate power.

Dwight Eisenhower led the largest army ever fielded during war and afterwards became President yet yielded his power and warned against the undue influence of the industrial-military complex, a system that he could have easily exploited for personal gain.

Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon not for personal gain, but because he believed it was best for the country knowing that it would cost him in the next election.

Outside of the presidency civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X held immense informal power and did so not for personal control, but for collective liberation. Their efforts ultimately ended in their untimely deaths but their sacrifice ultimately benefited the people they represented.

One of the most decorated military officers in U.S. history, General Smedley Butler spent his later years openly criticizing American imperialism and war profittering. He exposed a plot by wealthy elites to stage a fascist coup against Franklin Roosevelt which would have seen him put into a position of power. Rather than profit from the system he once served he spent his later years working to dismantle it.

True leadership isn't only about refusing a crown. It's more often about refusing to build a throne in the first place and choosing instead to lift others up and dismantling systems of oppression.

I picked Presidents because they are well known.

Thank you for the examples. They confirm that Washington is in a class all by himself. None of the others come close. We are all in his debt.