RETIRED GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON.

Few Americans realize that, in addition to being the first U.S. President, George Washington was also the nation's first retired general. In the years immediately following his Presidency, Washington pioneered the field of military punditry, parlaying his prodigious gift for second-guessing active generals' battle plans into the most lucrative phase of his career. Today's retired generals, believed to number in the tens of thousands, owe Washington more than a debt of thanks; they owe him their salaries, their book deals, and their per diems.

Washington seemed to foreshadow his career as a retired general in his famous Farewell Address to the nation, in 1796. After warning Americans against the dangers of foreign entanglements, he said, "If, however, the nation chooses to get into some foreign entanglements, I will be available to offer expert analysis on those entanglements--as long as the price is right."Returning to Mount Vernon, Washington was so confident that big money offers would come rolling in that he commissioned, at great personal expense, a new set of teeth, which had been handcrafted from the finest Cuban mahogany. "Soon I will be living large,"he predicted, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson.

But in his first months of retirement, bookings were few. In a sense, this was Washington's own fault; President John Adams had taken to heart his warning about foreign entanglements and was refusing to open any mail that had the word le or la on the envelope. Martha Washington, in her diaries from this period, paints a picture of an irritable Washington waiting each day by the mailbox, and cursing as he tore through the inevitable circulars from local fishmongers and blacksmiths.

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