Parallel developments in England and America have yielded a regime paradox. Britain retains an anointed monarch who is officially the head of state, but is actually ruled by a unicameral elected legislature, the House of Commons (after the House of Lords was neutered in 1911). In America, the trappings of monarchy were long ago rejected, but presidents are true and independent heads of government. Since the Progressive Era, presidents have wielded even more power than originally intended—we have, by some accounts, an “Imperial Presidency.” In Nelson’s words: “On one side of the Atlantic, there would be kings without monarchy; on the other, monarchy without kings.”
As we prepare to elect our next king, ought we to envy the Brits? Some Americans can’t help it, for a variety of reasons. Traditionalists cast a wistful eye on the British state’s official sacral basis, reverently appreciating a lingering shade of the ancien régime. Meanwhile, some progressives tire of our system which, by making the executive independent, makes possible divided government with its attendant gridlock.
Yuval Levin and Philip Wallach have eloquently defended this constitutional inefficiency as a virtue because it forces the legislative and executive branches to bargain and deliberate toward a moderate consensus. They contrast this to parliamentary systems like Britain’s, in which government is never divided and can ram through a radical program within a short duration. They see here a failure to put checks on the mutable (and potentially tyrannical) passions of the majority. These concerns follow Hamilton, who in Federalist # 71 worried about the “almost irresistible” tendency of “the legislative authority to absorb every other.” An energetic, independent executive provides a counterweight.
Checking the legislature wasn’t the only benefit Hamilton saw in a strong executive. In Federalist #70, he underlined the necessity of “energy in the executive” for “good government.” Making an audacious comparison to the Roman republican office of dictator, Hamilton argued that a “vigorous” executive “is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks.” Conducting foreign policy, and the execution of the laws domestically, often requires “decision, activity, secrecy, and despatch,” of which “one man” is capable while a large assembly is not.