The Once and Future King

The book and its premise

The Once and Future King: The Rise and Fall of Crown Government is Frank H. Buckley’s book on the growth of American presidential power, discussed with Bob Zadek on the show in 2014 under the framing of whether America has become an elective monarchy Has America Become an “Elective Monarchy”? (2014). Zadek introduces the subject by playing “Hail to the Chief,” which he calls the traditional ceremonial music played when the president enters the room, and asks whether the country has a king or a president, and whether the Constitution got it wrong or the country went astray from it.

He calls them brilliant and practical rather than academic, and says their debates are the most fascinating readings on the structure of liberty, better even than the Federalist Papers. Zadek adds that James Madison reconstructed the convention debates nightly from memory and notes, kept the book secret for many years, and that it became a crucial source document.

Pomp, deference and the parliamentary contrast

Zadek’s complaint, as he states it, is the reverence accorded the office: Presidents’ Day celebrated as though the country should be thankful it has had presidents, when the only significance of a president is having been, for a time, the best politician. He contrasts the British and Canadian prime minister taking pointed questions in the House of Commons with a presidential press conference governed by protocol and respect.

Buckley agrees that having to face the opposition keeps a leader honest and tends to produce someone better on his feet, wittier and more in command, and he notes that in Canada the prime minister must do it in two languages. He recalls the Daily Caller sending a reporter who questioned Obama rudely about immigration, Obama becoming visibly angry, and the White House press corps afterward dumping on the reporter for his impertinence and want of deference to the head of state. He observes that the Queen is not treated that way in Britain, and that the contrast tends to produce a different kind of leader from the thin-skinned, imperious person who can rise in American politics — not all of them, but, he says, the current occupant could be so described.

Impeachment and structural remedies

Near the end of the 2014 episode, Zadek explains the impeachment rules: the House indicts by majority vote, the Senate convicts by two-thirds, and the original draft had required only a majority for conviction until Gouverneur Morris changed it during the Committee on Style’s tidying up, with no objection because the delegates were tired and wanted to go home Has America Become an “Elective Monarchy”? (2014). Buckley adds that the change came in the last two weeks of a four-month convention, when much was thrown in that was never discussed. Zadek speculates that without Morris’s change Clinton might not have served out the balance of his term.

Asked what structural changes would help, Buckley says suggested constitutional amendments will probably go nowhere, and that a detailed, specific amendment can effectively be overturned by the Supreme Court — which makes the power to nominate justices one of the president’s most important powers. His own proposal is to go back to what he says was intended: let Congress appoint the president and let Congress remove the president by majority vote. Zadek calls that the way of a parliamentary system, and Buckley reports that when he mentions it people say Americans would not like it, to which he replies that it was huge in Canada.

Across episodes: the Mason line and later uses

The elective-monarchy charge recurs. In a 2017 episode on The Republic of Virtue, Zadek calls George Mason perhaps the most prescient of the founding generation, notes that Mason helped participate in the writing of the Constitution but would not sign it, and reads Mason’s 1787 warning that the Framers were constituting not a British government but a more dangerous monarchy, an elective one F.H. Buckley on The Republic of Virtue (2017). Zadek ties the line to Obama’s pen and phone and recalls Buckley’s earlier appearance, when Buckley observed that the American presidency has more power than any king ever fantasized about having.

The later episodes do not develop the argument so much as reuse it. In 2020 Buckley, asked about California’s posture toward Washington, calls the state’s conduct California imperialism — California wanting to impose California standards on the rest of the country Did California Just Declare Itself a Nation-State? (2020). In 2022 the discussion turns to Buckley’s Progressive Conservatism, where he argues that the word progressive has been adopted by the left, that the people who call themselves progressives are anti-moderns who want politics to be a battle of race against race, and that there is an important history of progressivism in the GOP, found in Lincoln’s internal policies, in Teddy Roosevelt, and in Eisenhower Progressive Conservatism with F.H. Buckley (2022). The 2022 excerpt breaks off before Buckley develops the frontier thesis, so nothing further from it can be reported.

Book summary

Has America Become An “Elective Monarchy”?

The story of the Constitutional Convention is told in most history books as a meeting of great minds, in which governing principles for a free and lasting republic were written down in accordance with the best ideas of the day. We might wonder, though, why several of the key Framers refused to sign the final draft. Even James Madison, often considered the main architect for the Constitution, claimed to have only signed it because it was “better than nothing.” In his new book, “The Once and Future King: The Rise of Crown Government in America,” Francis H. Buckley has traced out the real story – a long and difficult path to the compromise that became the final draft of the Constitution. Buckley finds the seeds of our increasingly monarchical executive officeholders in a fatal flaw in the document: the popular election of the president. George Mason predicted the danger in electing a single individual to serve as both the nation’s chief executive and ceremonial head of state. After refusing to sign the final draft, Mason warned, “We are not indeed constituting a British Government, but a more dangerous monarchy, an elective one.” Is it too late to reverse course? Find out this Sunday!

‘King George III is gone, but hey, look around the corner,’ — Frank H. Buckley

GMU Biography:

Frank Buckley is…

• a Foundation Professor at George Mason University School of Law, where he has taught since 1989.

• Senior editor of The American Spectator.

• [Was] a visiting Olin Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School.

• His most recent books are The American Illness (Yale 2013), Fair Governance (Oxford 2009), Just Exchange(Routledge 2005) and The Morality of Laughter (Michigan 2003).

Amazon link to book

GMU Book summary

Reviews:

“The Once and Future King deals with constitutional issues at a more serious level than almost anything else I have read recently. The prose, moreover, is elegant and flowing. This is a beautifully written, very interesting, and largely persuasive book.”

— Philip Hamburger, Columbia Law School, author of Separation of Church and State

Summary:

PT I - THE RISE AND FALL OF CROWN GOVERNANCE

Chapter 1: Rex Quondam, Rex Futurus

Four constitutions in the United States:

1. Pre-Revolutionary colonies under the Crown — strong powers vested in the King’s governors (First period of Crown Governance)

2. Post-Constitutional Convention: power vested in Congress, who was expected to elect the president in most cases

3. Evolving separation of powers: 50 years following the Constitutional Convention, as popular election of presidents arises, splits power between legislative and executive branches

4. Modern times: Return to Crown Governance as executive lawmaking has replaced many functions of Congress.

The progression in UK and Canada has mirrored that of the United States, first with the rise of “Cabinet Government” led by ruling party’s principal politicians, and more recently the rise of a much more powerful Prime Minister (albeit with less separation of powers).

George Mason’s underrated importance, and correct prediction

“Crown government might seem to be coded in the constitutional DNA of monarchies such as Britain and Canada. For Americans, however, the return to one-man rule may appear a betrayal of the Revolution and its promise of republican government. So it seemed to George Mason, who complained at the Philadelphia Convention that a popularly elected president would “degenerate” into an “elective monarchy,” which was worse, he thought, than the real thing. A hereditary king like George III lacked the legitimacy conferred by voters, and therefore had to share power with the legislature. An elective president would not be so constrained, and would thus be more dangerous to liberty.” (Kindle Locations 160-165).

Framers intended weaker separation of powers:

“The Framers wanted a government with a much weaker separation of powers. James Madison came to Philadelphia with a proposal that came to be called the Virginia Plan, in which an elected House of Representatives would appoint senators, and the House and Senate together would appoint the president. [i.e., formal, but weak separation] Such a system would have more closely resembled the British Westminster system of parliamentary government, and the gridlock that characterizes Washington today would largely be absent. The party that won the White House would typically win the legislative branch, giving us the winner-take-all government of parliamentary systems.” (Kindle Locations 186-190). .

Less gridlocked systems are more efficient at passing legislation (not always a good thing), but, “The increased likelihood of deadlock in a presidential system might invite dictators to step in and cure the problem by ruling extralegally, or at a minimum, by extending the scope of executive power.” (Kindle Locations 2927-2929).

Chapter 2: The American President - Retelling of the long, arduous constitutional convention, or how Compromise, not Principle, led to the popular election of the president and the separation of powers:

Buckley argues that strong separation of powers resulted from argument between the smaller states rights supporters and Virginia-based nationalists who wanted more power vested in a centralized government. The end result was not the pure calculated genius of a James Madison, but serious compromise – no one agreed about the proper scope of executive power.

Madison, influenced by David Hume, saw benefits to using a “filtration” process for electing people to higher offices, in which higher representatives were selected by lower ones, who were in turn elected by the people. Hume also saw that a larger republic would protect against small interest groups from organizing across such a large polity – to this, Madison added that factions would counterbalance each other. These two ideas were the basis for the “Virginia Plan,” which was also supported by men like George Mason:

“The crucial power would be vested in the House of Representatives, Mason’s “House of Commons,” which would appoint the members of the Senate, and which, with the Senate, would appoint the president, who would thus be doubly insulated from the people.” (Kindle Locations 601-603).

This system was ultimately not that different from the Parliamentary system (Westminster model) that the Founders knew best. Paradoxically:

“They had lived under a form of it during the colonial period, with royal governors and elected assemblies, and saw it from afar in Britain. And while they might have abhorred government from Westminster before the American Revolution, once it was over they fell over themselves in praise of the government of Westminster.” (Kindle Locations 613-615).

Fears of excessive democracy were fresh in their minds because of the failures of the Articles of Confederation, and a number of mob rebellions and lynchings, some even in Philadelphia during the actual convention (one, remarkably, in which people accused an old woman of being a witch).

George Mason would ultimately refuse to sign the Constitution because he felt it gave too much authority to the executive:

“The fear of democracy was especially pronounced when the subject of a popularly elected president arose. Roger Sherman thought that “an Independence of the Executive on the supreme Legislative, was … the very essence of tyranny.” Similarly, George Mason argued that “if strong and extensive powers are vested in the Executive, and that Executive consists only of one person, the government will of course degenerate (for I will call it a degeneracy) into a monarchy.” What delegates feared was that a president elected by the people would threaten liberty more than would a hereditary monarch who lacked the legitimacy conferred by a popular election. “We are not indeed constituting a British Government,” said Mason, “but a more dangerous monarchy, an elective one.” (Kindle Locations 691-694).

Some nationalists saw how a stronger executive could “resist parochial parties from different states,” but felt that direct election was going to far. James Wilson, a nationalist, thus proposed the electoral college, which was voted down. States Rights supporters countered with a proposal that would grant state legislators the authority to elect the President. The back and forth led to two completely divergent proposals, which forced a new committee for the purpose of compromise.

This compromise resulted in a proposal by Goveurner Morris of New York for a popularly elected president, to confer legitimacy on, and thus strengthen, the national government. This did away with Hume’s “filtration” principle, but added the feature of “separated powers,” which Madison took a liking to.

“Like Morris, he recognized that a president so elected would strengthen the national government, and like Morris he veiled his argument in separationist, rather than nationalist, terms: A separation of powers between legislative, executive, and judicial powers was essential to preserve liberty, and the three branches could be separate only if they were independent of each other. “A dependence of the Executive on the Legislature, would render it the Executor as well as the maker of laws; & then according to the observation of Montesquieu, tyrannical laws may be made that they may be executed in a tyrannical manner.”” (Kindle Locations 868-872).