Josh Marshall - TPM - "The Madness of King Trump"

[NRaleighLiberal]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-madness-of-king-trump

By JOSH MARSHALL Published JUNE 5, 2017 4:42 PM

Since President Trump was inaugurated in January we’ve heard an on-going discussion about how to interpret and understand Trump in the context of other authoritarian leaders around the world and from the past. That is an important conversation because that is, in most respects, the proper context in which to understand Trump.

But there’s another prism which has become increasingly clear over the last four months – that is the model of monarchy and the incapacitated king. I noted recently that the U.S. president is, largely by design, in key respects something like an elected monarch, albeit one bounded by two theoretically co-equal branches of government. The President isn’t president because he enjoys the support of his party or congressional majorities. He is president because being president means that he has a panoply of rights, prerogatives and powers as a person.

This is an altogether different model from the Westminster parliamentary system and its various permutations and derivations in which the prime minister is a creature of the legislative branch and in theory, and not infrequently in practice, can be removed from office when they lose support. Like a king, the President is president by right – not by divine right but by right of election. Other than impeachment or death, nothing can take those powers away from them.

But monarchies, even absolute ones, have always had to deal with the vagaries of genetics and human frailty. Sometimes the person who is king simply is not capable of doing the job. A child monarch will usually have a regency, a council which does the king things in the King’s name. In other cases, the king or queen has a radical mental deficiency or goes insane. In these cases, in history, the monarch usually doesn’t stop being monarch. Others are simply brought in to act in their name.

snip - much more at the link...a long, good read