On "Constitutional Crisis": Part IV

There are those who argue that until the modern period, the presidency was essentially ceremonial in nature. Others point to how close the independent confederation formed after the American revolution came to crowning George Washington, effectively exchanging one King George for another. Washington is often depicted as nobly turning aside the crown, sparing the newly forming nation a monarchy. Here in the "new" world, in the western hemisphere, we see many nations ruled by presidents elected to terms of office. I will argue here that, ironically, it is in the old world once ruled by absolute monarchs--kings, caesars, tzars and kaisers--that representative democracy became more highly evolved. Perhaps it is precisely because the old nation states knew intimately the dangers of absolutism that they took care to prevent its re-emergence. It is here, in the Americas, that ruling classes--often seated precariously atop empires large and small populated by surly native populations, imported slaves, indentured servants, adventurers and arrivistes--took special care to secure their own safety. A parliamentary democracy composed of such constituents would be dangerous, first of all, and secondly, (given the low opinion of white Christians for their lessers), to give the notion that such populations could rule intelligently, with any dignity at all, would not only be irresponsible, but laughable. The U.S. presidency thus evolved into a role partly ceremonial, partly that of a colonial administrator and partly that of a war chief. It has proven itself to be, from the perspective of those who continue to look to government for democratic norms, a tragic failure. Its further impact, since parliamentary advantages have been abandoned in favor of what is essentially a system of serial monarchy, is to have encouraged an extra-constitutional two-party system, hitched to the failed star of a flawed presidency, which has been less and less friendly toward actual political diversity and has evolved into an institutional party representing only one segment of the society it is mandated to represent--the monied class, large corporations and a military-industrial complex which looks more and more like a permanent government.