‘King’ Trump shows flaws in U.S. system

Have we at long last reached a teachable moment? The crisis at the heart of the American political system revolves around a notion of head of state that is increasingly looking to many observers as “monarchical.” In the New York Times, the Washington Post and The New Yorker, references abound to the seeming arbitrariness of President Donald Trump’s increasingly chaotic actions and proposals.

But this sort of monarchy isn’t one anyone in Canada, Australia or New Zealand would recognize. It is another sort of monarchy shrouded in the mists of a couple centuries and almost unrecognizable to citizens who live under an evolved constitutional monarchy.

Only in the United States do citizens solemnly go about every four years (since Dec. 15, 1788) to re-elect King George the Third. And not just to re-elect him, but also to “coronate” him, with great solemnity, in front of crowds of apparently varying sizes.

This is not a cute joke any more than President Trump is a cute joke. When the framers of the American Constitution set about to create the role of head of state, the closest model at hand was the Hanoverian monarchy. And so they created an elected 18th-century head of state and stuffed the notion inside a rigid constitution that is very difficult to change. The U.S. Constitution doesn’t really evolve: it sits like a toad on a tree stump and awaits earth tremors or fierce storms before moving on, if it moves on at all.

Some of the powers President Trump has inherited bear remarkable similarities to powers George III took for granted. For example, George III as head of government appointed his own cabinet. Ditto President Trump.

The notion of a parliamentary head of government was just emerging from years of constitutional jockeying and our contemporary understanding of a prime minister rooted in an elected legislature doesn’t seriously get established as a matter of constitutional convention until the earlier part of the 19th century.

Like George III, President Trump — like presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush — can initiate some foreign bellicosity without the initial say-so of any legislature, although he would eventually have to go to the lower house to get funds if the bellicosity turned into an expensive war. Ditto George III.

And no matter the disrepute, or — in the case of George III — diminished physical or mental competence, only a previously identified and designated heir could assume the mantle of head of state and head of government. Ditto, more or guys in the Trump White House know how to wield great power now that they’ve got their mitts on it.

Then there is the special, added U.S. embellishment stemming from concerns over two centuries ago about fairness for the slave states and slave owners. Hence the “genius” of the Electoral College, which to this day can ensure that a majority of citizens do not in fact get their preferred choice elected into high office. In the most recent presidential election, the “checks and the balances” belonged to the successors of the slave states through the unequal distribution of Electoral College votes.

The teachable moment for Canadians is to realize not that we have such a superior system of governance, but that we have evolved a constitutional system that declines to become calcified in the distribution of power. Of course it is not perfect. No system is, but right now, looking at the convulsions in the U.S., it is easy to see that a ceremonial head of state and a more easily disposable head of government rooted in a legislature offer a saner approach to governance than the 18th-century had to offer.

We cannot chastise historical Americans for lack of 2020 foresight. In fact, the American Revolution and settlement pretty well assured Canada and the other future self-governing dominions of the old British Empire that they would be able to develop a system less disruptive to constitutional common sense. This was because the continually evolving shift in power between the legislative and executive branches continued apace, and the Sovereign’s role became increasingly symbolic and ceremonial.

The late Professor Ursula Franklin of the University of Toronto, one of the most honoured academics in Canadian history, once participated in a 1999 ceremony at Massey College where she joined Nobel Laureate John Polanyi in welcoming Prince Philip as a new senior fellow of the college. A survivor of the Holocaust, a pacifist and lifelong social egalitarian, she observed to several people near her on that day that one of the reasons she liked the notion of the Crown in Canada was that she thought it was good for Canadians to have such a powerful, positive and tangible symbol of “absolute power defanged.”

Many Canadians would agree, even if they expressed it less pungently.