Josef K wrote:It's been a while since we've been lorded over by the English, I think what you mean is that we have a genuine love of alchohol.

Nico Adie wrote:

Josef K wrote:It's been a while since we've been lorded over by the English, I think what you mean is that we have a genuine love of alchohol.

This is a common misconception. Us Scots only drink when we've run out of heroin.

Uncle Ovipositor wrote:

sparky wrote:As a matter of fact, the House of Lords and the likewise elitist judiciary are two of the biggest brakes on our slide towards a police state.

They are a perverse source of oversight, but currently I am very grateful for them. They've managed to curb or at least slow a number of draconian measures that our current government have brought in under the pretext of anti-terrorism.

Finally did something good for the country, eh? It only took them 700 years to get around to it.

These guys and the royals I will never understand. There is much I love about the UK (not the least of which is Chris Morris), but then there's this crap. I mean, when we have inbred beflippered half-wits in office it's because we voted them in, not because they have a birth right to it.

But one of the most conspicuous things about America these days is that it does not take a visit from the British monarch to give the White House “an air of royalty”. In 2009 the betting is that America will see the son of a former president replaced by the wife of another former president. If Hillary Clinton is then re-elected in 2012, the world's greatest democracy will have been ruled by either a Bush or a Clinton for 28 years straight. And why should things end there? Michael Barone, author and pundit, points out that George P. Bush, the current president's nephew, will be eligible to run for the presidency in 2012, Chelsea Clinton will be eligible in 2016 and Jeb Bush will remain a viable candidate until 2024.

Americans have always been in two minds about the monarchical principle. They may have booted out a foreign king in 1776. They may bring up their children with stories of presidents who were born in log cabins or shotgun-shacks. And they may like to boast about their every-man-a-king populism. But they have always been careful not to go too far.

The Federalists reintroduced bits of the monarchical principle as an antidote to what Alexander Hamilton called “the amazing violence and turbulence of the democratic spirit”. And Americans have proved remarkably tolerant of political dynasties. Throughout American history the same families keep popping up: the Roosevelts and Tafts, Rockefellers and La Follettes, Bayhs and Kennedys. Rodney Frelinghuysen, from New Jersey, is the sixth generation of his family to serve in Congress.

But lately ambivalence is turning into out-and-out royalism. Montesquieu described 18th-century Britain as a republic in the guise of a monarchy, because the elite was happy to swap one royal family for another whenever it suited them (as in 1688 and 1714). These days, it is tempting to argue that America is becoming a monarchy in the guise of a republic.

This is not just a matter of the Bush-Clinton lock on the presidency. It is also a matter of the way people feel about the institution. Walter Bagehot, a 19th-century editor of The Economist, argued that people like to see a “family on the throne” because it “brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life”. Similarly, American politicos chart the clash of great families and their retainers. Biographers probe the psycho-dynamics of presidents' personal relationships. Did “43” invade Iraq as part of an Oedipal struggle with “41”? Will Hillary take revenge on her philandering husband by outperforming him in the Oval Office? And lowbrow journalists compete with each other to reveal what goes on behind the glittering façade of the White House. (One snippet from a recent “intimate portrait” of the first lady: Mr Bush likes to spend his evenings doing jigsaw puzzles, one of which shows the face of his Scotch terrier, Barney.)

There are lots of reasons for America's royalist turn. Dynasties come with brand names that voters can recognise, a huge electoral advantage in a country of 300m people. Both Mr Bush and Mrs Clinton started off their first presidential races far ahead of their rivals. They also come with bands of loyal retainers. Bagehot's insight into the human advantages of monarchy is just as true in the world of tabloid journalism and Kitty Kelley tell-alls: people are fascinated by the doings of princesses like Jenna Bush and kings-in-waiting like George P. Bush.
Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton, Bush...

But Americans nevertheless need to recover some of their old republican spirit. There is nothing inherently wrong with the children or wives of politicians seeking high office, but there is definitely something wrong when people start treating them as heirs to the throne rather than candidates. And there is something very wrong indeed when people begin to see politics as a game that is played by “them” rather than “us”.

The dynastification of American political life is weakening America's claim to be a democratic beacon. These days political dynasties are usually associated with the young democracies of South Asia rather than mature republics. The dynastification of its political life also points to a deeper problem: the fact that America is producing a quasi-hereditary political elite, cocooned in a world of wealth and privilege and utterly divorced from most people's lives. The rest of the world is gradually moving beyond “idolatry to monarchs” and “servility to aristocratic pride”. Even Britain has expelled most of its aristocrats from the House of Lords. Does America, which led the world in ditching monarchs, hereditary titles and forelock-tugging, really want to be the first country to start going backwards?

Colonel Panic wrote:I think the UK government is really no more (nor much less) corrupt than our own here in the US, but I do think they ought to dump that whole monarchy thing. It really is a rather shameful form of government that's best left to the pages of history.

Colonel Panic wrote:The Queen can still issue edicts that override the vote of Parliament.

It's not invoked often, but the power is still there in place. And when it is invoked the results are never pretty.