The Kingdom of America

It is surprising that the Founding Fathers, breaking away form the British semi-constitutional monarchy, should have put together a constitution for America which follows the plan of a medieval and non-constitutional monarchy, albeit an elective monarchy.

The King (the President) sits in his palace (the White House) surrounded by his court.....he chooses  them, so that within the Administration his power is very great and in a sense absolute.

But he is constrained by the great territorial Earls and Lords ( the Senate)....he has to take account of their power when he frames and executes policies

And he cannot ignore the more widespread views of the population at large led by the lesser lords  ( the House of Representatives)

Nor can he ignore the Church (the Supreme Court) which examines ancient  and authoritative scripts to see how far they are relevant today

This seems to me an inefficient way to run a country. The President is too powerful in the Administration........in a real cabinet, he would have colleagues with  power bases of their own so the evolution of policy would not be centered in one mind. On the other hand the President is not powerful enough in the system as a whole, because of the role of Congress. But Congress is separated from government, and any tendency in the Senate or the House to see the path to good governance is constrained by too frequent re-elections. As for the Supreme Court,  if the terms of a constitution written in the 18th Century are confirmed, one has to ask why such a ancient text can be useful today,  whereas if the Court updates the Constitution then  it - the Court - becomes a part of the governmental structure - as it clearly is - created in a peculiar way

It needs a political genius of the highest order as President to run this system, who is also right minded in his or her aims. Franklin D Roosevelt was such a man, and one can only be astonished at the skill he showed in the New Deal,  and in the war both before and after Pearl Harbour. But a constitution should not depend on the emergence of a political genius of that order, especially as the President is elected by the public at large, who cannot know how the talents and minds of the candidates are balanced. I do not think that Frau Merkel or Mrs Thatcher would have won in a presidential type election. But some candidates appealing to the simplistic prejudices of the electorate can garner votes, as with Mr Corbyn in Britain or Mr Trump in the States

Too late, of course,  to do anything about this now, especially as US citizens are trained from birth to see the Constitution as the best possible instrument. I was however once at a dinner in Washington  with several Americans who without any prompting from me suddenly agreed about cabinet government as above. I felt an almost physical shock