Consider what they shared in common:
- Both founded a new system of government over a vast region of the world.
- Both fought wars with a foreign yet also familiar enemy. (For Mao, this was two different armies; just one for Washington.)
- Both made use of what Joseph Ellis calls, in his excellent Founding Brothers, "The strategy of enlightened procrastination." Washington realized that better than winning battles, was not losing them, because time and space was on his side. Mao made use of the same strategy, until he didn't have to. Tolstoy's War and Peace describes a Russian general winning the same way.
- In fact, Mao cited Washington as a hero in his youth.
- Both had bad teeth.
- So (1-4) both are recognized as the founders and symbols of their nations. Both appear on their country's most basic currency, for instance.
But in other ways, the men could hardly be more different. And that comes down to temperament, and ideology. I think we got the better of that deal.