Though George Washington was elected unanimously, he was always a reluctant president. He pursued a second term in 1792 only at the urging of his cabinet, and in 1796, when he insisted it was time to step down, he famously warned that not to do so risked a return to the very tyranny Americans had fought to overthrow.

“The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create whatever the form of government, a real despotism,” Washington wrote in what’s become known as his Farewell Address. “A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position.”

In the years since, millions of Americans have put their lives on the line to protect against the despotism that Washington warned about. In World War II, Americans sacrificed their lives and lost their loved ones to defeat dictators in Germany, Italy and Japan. For nearly the rest of the 20th century, the United States led the free world to preserve democratic ideals against the Soviet Union’s push for Communism.

That’s a proud history, and it hasn’t been much of a challenge until recently for American presidents to extol it — the wisest of them mindful of how far short of its ideals the United States has at times fallen, even as it has tried to guide other nations toward democracy as the surest safeguard of human rights, peace and opportunity.