Explanation:
The states didn’t act immediately. It took until February 1779 for 12 states to approve the document. Maryland held out until March 1781, after it settled a land argument with Virginia.
2. The central government was designed to be very, very weak. The Articles established “the United States of America” as a perpetual union formed to defend the states as a group, but it provided few central powers beyond that. But it didn’t have an executive official or judicial branch.
3. The Articles Congress only had one chamber and each state had one vote. This reinforced the power of the states to operate independently from the central government, even when that wasn’t in the nation’s best interests.
4. Congress needed 9 of 13 states to pass any laws. Requiring this high supermajority made it very difficult to pass any legislation that would affect all 13 states.
One of his main challenges was that in many ways, Washington had to create the presidency.
Of course, the Constitution sketched the outlines of the position-its powers and limitations-but the actual nature of the job (the tone of the office; the ways in which the president would interact with other national officeholders or with the people of the United States; the workings of the cabinet) were up for grabs. The United States was an experimental government, led by a new, experimental type of executive officer. There was no precedent for this office in a world full of kings, leaving Washington the monumental task of figuring out how to act like a president.
It was a challenge with potentially enormous consequences, because everyone assumed-including Washington-that if he failed at this task, he could potentially bring the entire experiment in government crashing to ruin.
