The King of the USA

After the constitutional deliberations concluded in 1787 a Mrs. Powell asked Benjamin Franklin if we had a Republic or a Monarchy. Franklin's famous and immediate reply was "A republic, if you can keep it". While there is some occasional discussion about the merits of a republic over a democracy, we don't really spend much time thinking about the merits of monarchy as a form of government in modern day America. But it was a serious topic of discussion at the time of the founding.

So why not a king? There were some very good candidates for king at the founding of America. There were also those that were unhappy with the performance of congress during the American revolution and supported the idea of making George Washington king of the United States. When Colonel Lewis Nicola wrote to General Washington with such a proposal, Washington's response left little doubt about his opinion of the idea, "...no occurrence in the course of the War, has given me more painful sensations than your information of there being such ideas existing in the Army as you have expressed, and I must view with abhorrence, and reprehend with severity....You could not have found a person to whom your schemes are more disagreeable.”

Maybe that's evidence that he would have made a pretty good king. In a practical sense we understand that even good kings are problematic due to the potential of corruption that accompanies absolute power, but it should work in theory. If we took all the best attributes of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Locke, Burk, and a couple of saints for good measure, and rolled them into one person, we'd have a pretty good king that might even be beyond the corruption of power. Of course he would eventually go the way all kings do and the monarchy would have to find a successor. Such kings are probably in short supply. Essentially, all we would need is a king with all of those attributes that would live forever.

Conveniently enough, the founding fathers created just such a king. They made that king out of parchment and ink and breathed their collective breath of life into him in September of 1787. The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land. That is the nature of a constitutional republic. The founding fathers were able to leave us with a king that would lead us long after they were gone from the earth. Unfortunately, they had much less control over the people in who's care they left their king and a king can still be overpowered, or simply done away with if left undefended. So we see in Washington today a mockery being made of the constitution by those that would make themselves king. Where defenders have been lacking we may soon need rescuers.