The American Monarchy
At the Constitutional Convention, the Founding Fathers thought that they were creating a republican government. It was a monarchy in republican clothes.
“If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.” King George III on George Washington’s retirement in 1796
“A man who has already paid the unprecedented penalty of relinquishing the highest elective office of the United States.” Gerald Ford in 1974, justifying his pardon of Richard Nixon
The head of lettuce that outlasted former British Prime Minister Liz Truss is back, but now it is in a crowded room. Joe Biden, Justin Trudeau, Rishi Sunak, and Emmanuel Macron all stand at the precipice of being forced from office. Barring an unprecedented polling error that statisticians and John Curtice would talk about forever, Sunak already knows the hour and place of his metaphorical execution, before King Charles III at Buckingham Palace this coming Friday at around 9:30 local time. Macron has the longest lease on life, as he could remain in office until 2027 even after a victory by the National Front in the legislative elections. Meanwhile Trudeau and Biden cling to their party leaderships in the face of evidence that neither is in a position to be reelected.
It is tempting to wonder what makes these leaders carry on to the bitter end, insisting on clinging to office until absolutely forced out in the most embarrassing way, either subjecting themselves to relentless mockery like Sunak, Trudeau, and Macron, or making mockeries of themselves, as Biden did in the debate against Donald Trump a week ago. Why does no one pull a Jânio Quadros (let alone a Getúlio Vargas) and cry out “take this job and shove it?”
Part of it is the meritocracy. We live in a time where careers are broadly open to talent, or certainly more open than they were before the Second World War or so, when ability to access the best-regarded professions depended on family pedigree. This is mostly a good thing, as we all know the image of the talented entry-level clerk watching as an uninterested and often untalented son or daughter runs an inherited family enterprise into the ground and consider the aggregate effect of this happening everywhere in a society. But the flip side of this, as Michael Sandel writes, is that those who accomplish something on personal merit begin to assume that they uniquely deserve whatever they have achieved, that it is theirs by birthright, and that those who question their continued achievement can only be motivated by jealousy. Merit becomes the source of personal worth, and if someone leaves a position of leadership, no matter how long the tenure or how much was accomplished, it is a failure, an “unprecedented penalty” in Gerald Ford’s words, worse than the humiliation that comes from clinging to a position that one lon longer, well, merits.
But in the case of something like the U.S. presidency, there are some other considerations. The American president is the national leader, at least outside the Middle East, Africa, or Southeast Asia, who most resembles a pre-modern monarch. At the Constitutional Convention that began in 1787 in Philadelphia, the Founding Fathers thought that they were creating a republican government, with a civilian president, multiple branches, and checks and balances among those branches. But they were nonetheless working in the late 18th century, before there would be other examples of more modern and better-functioning democracies. While the British parliamentary system had developed to the point that there was a prime minister who led a parliamentary majority, it was not a full constitutional monarchy, and the Declaration of Independence lists ways in which King George III played a very real role in setting the policies to which the Thirteen Colonies objected. Modern parliamentarism under a constitutional monarchy dates to the middle of the 19th century at best. The model of a functioning government available to the founding Fathers was a hereditary monarchy, with examples of democratic republics more historically distant (the Roman Empire or the Dutch Republic). The Founding Fathers created a monarchy dressed up in republican clothing, eliminating the royal family and making the monarchy non-hereditary and quasi-elective.
The American president is far more monarchical than a European prime minister. The president is the head of state, and presides over symbolic national functions despite being a partisan politician. He (they have all been “he”) is popularly elected to a fixed term that can only be cut short by death, resignation, or impeachment. American presidents also hold powers directly drawn from the royal prerogative, including very wide powers of pardon, and the ability to appoint thousands of federal officials that are career appointments in other systems. The “absolute immunity for official acts” that the Supreme Court articulated this week is also a manifestation of the royal prerogative. The White House has the trappings of a palace, and the Secret Service, while it has a very real protective role to play, also gives the appearance of a royal guard. Prime ministers are interviewed in scrums while presidents give very formal interviews in the Roosevelt or East Rooms. They are only to be photographed by their own staff. The president is seen as a unifying figure, especially during times of crisis. This role as a symbol of national unity and resilience can lead to heightened respect and deference, particularly in the media and public discourse. American political culture also places a strong emphasis on the importance of leadership and individual achievement.
Add to this the fact that since 1952, presidents have not left the office willingly, stepping down at the end of a term and declaring it is time to retire. Only Lyndon Johnson declined to seek a reelection for which he was eligible, and even this came after he tested the Democratic primary and realized that reelection was going to be a longshot. The 22nd Amendment has helped, of course, with its unequivocal limit of two terms for any individual. It enables a president to leave office in a way that seems willing and gracious, even though recent two-term presidents, including Reagan, Clinton, and Obama, expressed a certain regret at not being able to seek third terms, unlike Washington.
As we have already noted, since the 1950s American presidents have been limited to two terms in office. Instead of a maximum, it has become a benchmark, in particular the imperative of reelection as ratification of a successful first term. All politicians feel the imperative to keep their jobs, and none enjoy effectively being fired by the electorate. But there are numerous instances of very successful and consequential leaders who served single terms–some countries allow the head of government to serve only one term. But in the United States, public opinion looks down on single-term presidents. Jimmy Carter presided over the negotiations for the Camp David accords, and in hindsight received notable credit for starting trends that led to the end of the cold war. George H.W. Bush presided over the end of the Cold War and the First Persian Gulf War. Both had particular distinguished periods as former presidents. Yet they are both failures in the public mind. As the comedian Dana Carvey put it in a 1992 Saturday Night Live sketch playing Bush, “Waaah! I’m a one-termer! I’m Jimmy Carter!”) The shame of a single term clearly drove Donald Trump to madness, all the way to inciting a coup attempt to prevent an electoral loss from becoming official. When Joe Biden called himself a “bridge to the next generation” of Democratic leaders, it was never believable, and it was clear within the administration very early that the point of a long career appearing to the presidency was to exercise the office for eight years once he got there. The British Conservative Party over the last five years has been a stark example of a governing party ruthlessly jettisoning leaders who were lo longer assets politically, with leaders pushed out by their closest cabinet colleagues. In a White House, suggesting that a president not suited to the job step down voluntarily amounts to treachery on a par with regicide.
Scholars of comparative politics broadly argue that parliamentary systems are more effective and stable than presidential systems, particularly in terms of managing political conflicts and sustaining democratic governance. Juan Linz, Arend Lijphart, Giovanni Sartori, Alfred Stepan, and Maurice Duverger are all critics of presidentialism, arguing in particular that presidential systems lead to gridlock that has to be resolved with violence. The United States was always the grand exception to this, though its presidentialism suffers from the same defects, multiple veto points combined with a president who holds so much power as a national symbol he cannot be legitimately replaced. One of the major worries about the 2024 presidential election in the United States is that it will show once and for all that presidentialism in the U.S. Constitution is ultimately as unworkable as in any Latin American system.
References:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/02/opinion/supreme-court-immunity-trump.html
https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/speeches/740061.asp
https://blogs.loc.gov/manuscripts/2022/12/george-washington-the-greatest-man-in-the-world/
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-american-way-of-strategy-9780195341416
https://constitution-unit.com/2020/09/30/the-role-of-monarchy-in-modern-democracy/
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374289980/thetyrannyofmerit
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26473280
https://www.nytimes.com/1961/08/27/archives/janio-quadros-resigns.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/02/opinion/american-exceptionalism-reagan-biden-trump.html
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/225694/pdf
https://ejpr.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1475-6765.1980.tb00569.x
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-22861-4_5
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/02/opinion/trump-one-term-president.html
While it is true that the Latin American presidential systems have often broken down, we should note that this is often related to the fact that they use proportional representation electoral systems not first-past-the-post as the US does, so it is a tough comparison to draw. Only some Latin American impeachments have been credible as opposed to politicized. However there is one respect in which some Latin American countries have done better than the US in terms of rule of law— several have prosecuted, convicted and sometimes jailed presidents for corruption, something the US cannot seem to do even against an ex-president.