Author: Barbara

Any reason for a leader to feed a monster? For a leader to feed a creature that would devour him? If yes, I can’t think of it. I have no idea what possessed Joe Biden and his team to post his decision to quit the presidential race on X. X is of course the social media platform owned by Elon Musk, the Democrats’ nemesis who is doing what he can to defeat them in the November elections.

I asked around about this and got no good answer. X, I was told, though diminished, is still the app of choice. The app people use if they want their shot to be heard around the world. Bunk! As if a traditional statement of resignation issued by the White House would be buried. As if no other social media platform would suffice.

In a piece posted to this site on July 19, “Leadership and Lucre,” I scorned the role of big money in American politics. I focused on Musk who had not only pledged to donate to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign humungous sums of money but who was saying what he wanted when on X to reach his 191 million followers. Musk, I wrote, “uses X to push and promote people and positions he prefers, and to demean and denigrate those he does not.” Just this week he lived up to his billing. Musk posted a manipulated video of Kamala Harris in which she says that Biden is senile, that she does “not know the first thing about running the country,” and that she, as a woman of color, is the “ultimate diversity hire.” Great, Elon. Message received.

Did Biden think that announcing on X would be without consequence? Well, he might’ve thought twice. As it turned out, the president did his nemesis a big favor.  According to the Wall Street Journal, “Recent weeks show the potential Musk has at recapturing X’s place in the collective conversation. ‘Ride the information wave,’ Musk encouraged this past week, shortly after Biden made his announcement to exit from the race via X and other social media…. Biden’s post on X garnered more than 380 million views by the following day, and X was credited as being the place where some in the Biden camp learned of the decision.”

Was it predictable that the choice of X as the medium for an announcement that everyone was waiting for would impact X? Yes. Was it predictable that this impact would be positive? Yes. Why then did this leader feed this monster? Beats me.

Beware leaders. If you have power, and are highly visible, everything you do and say matters.

As if by magic, America’s presidential campaign changed the instant it was effectively certain that Joe Biden was withdrawing from the race and Kamala Harris would succeed him at the head of the Democratic ticket. As if by magic, money from donors large and small suddenly started flowing into Harris’s campaign coffers. As if by magic Democrats were suddenly energized to volunteer for her campaign in startlingly large numbers. As if by magic Republicans were suddenly on the defensive, the man at the head of the ticket, Donald Trump, now the angry, unpredictable oldster and the man behind him, J. D. Vance, now the retrograde, far right misogynist. And, as if by magic, the polls suddenly changed in favor of the Democrats, not dramatically but perceptibly.

What explains the turnaround? How did it come to pass that Kamala Harris was transformed in an instant from second rate vice president to first rate presidential candidate? Was she really one thing one day and something entirely different the next? Or was it Democrats who metamorphosed overnight from depressed and disgruntled to eager and excited? Or was instead something about the context, the country, that changed so quickly and radically it explains what seems an entirely altered political landscape?

I don’t want to exaggerate the point. The November election is still light years away and the outcome remains uncertain. But there is no question: Harris at the head of the Democratic ticket has changed the mood of the moment. The presidential race has been energized and the odds that the Democrats can hold on to the White House have improved.

To understand the transformation and how it happened with lightning speed let’s look at the three parts of what I call the leadership system: 1) leaders; 2) followers, and 3) contexts. In this case – not in every case but in this case – it’s best to look at them in the sequence in which I listed them.

First, the leader changed. The Democratic nominee for president went from being old and tired to being young and energetic. From being an old model, a white man, to being a new model, a multiracial woman. From exuding depression and defensiveness to exuding just the opposite, hope and change.

Second, in response to the first, a changed leader, followers followed. They changed. Democrats including elected officials, wealthy donors, union leaders, party activists, black interest groups, and ordinary voters went from being disinterested and disengaged to being enlivened and invigorated. They now saw Harris through an entirely different lens which explains why they were, suddenly, strongly motivated to support her. Again: Harris was not an especially visible or successful vice president, either as a leader or as a manager. She became a figure of the future only after it became clear that she even had a future – and a remarkably promising one at that.

Finally, given leadership is a relationship, between leaders and their followers, together they impact on context. America’s political landscape has changed because overnight there was a bond between Vice President Harris and large swaths of the American electorate. A bond so swiftly forged and, already, so strongly in place it could not even have been imagined a month ago.

Maybe it’s not magic. But the alchemy of leadership is mind-boggling.

I have long been disappointed in the failure of the leadership industry clearly and consistently to distinguish between “management” and “leadership.”* Several experts have defined the words, ostensibly clarifying the differences between them, but none of their efforts have stuck. Moreover, institutions of higher education have continued to conflate and confuse “management” and “leadership” – to the point where mostly they are used interchangeably, as if they were synonymous, which they are not.

Whenever distinctions between “management” and “leadership,” the latter has usually been more highly valued – “leaders” favored over “managers.” For example, leadership expert Warren Bennis wrote that, “the manager administers, the leader innovates; the manager is a copy, the leader is an original; the manager maintains, the leader develops;” and so on.**

The issue – leadership versus management – came to mind again recently with so much attention on the Republican National Convention and on Donald Trump’s transformation of the Republican Party. In just a few years it became a MAGA party, a party of the right not the center, no longer the party of Ronald Reagan, now the one of Trump. In thrall to him and him alone. Despite his deeply flawed character and his multiple malfeasances, during the Republican National Convention Trump was an object of admiration, even veneration.

Which raises the question of how he rose from the ashes of electoral defeat, the subsequent insurrection, and a string of legal and financial setbacks. Rose to become King of the Republicans, and plausibly elected American President for a second time. The answer lies in Trump’s exceptional leadership – and in Trump’s excellent management.

While his leadership skills have gotten relentless attention, his management skills have not. We seem to assume Trump’s powers are so exceptional that his current kingship was almost to be expected. But it was not. It was the entirely unanticipated outcome of his management of small groups of people composed of his closest aides and advisors, and his brain trust. The word “management” then should be applied to Trump’s ability, largely behind the scenes, to assemble a team that has done a remarkably good job of resurrecting a man presumed by many if not most to be politically dead.

After his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, Trump hired a familiar operative, Susie Wiles, to oversee his political committee. She in turn built a team that included, for example, Chris LaCivita, a skilled political veteran prepared to dedicate himself wholly and completely to getting Trump back in the political mix. To make him for the third time, despite all his baggage, a viable presidential candidate.       

Once this was accomplished, the party line, the Trump party line as opposed to the previous Republican party line, prevailed at every turn.  This was evidenced before and during the Convention, notably as it pertained to Trump’s determination completely to control the party platform.

The task was left to a small group of fiercely committed Trump loyalists. The New York Times: “The Trump campaign decided it would go to every delegation in the country to handpick the people who would represent the campaign on committees for rules, credentials and the party platform. It was an enormous organizational exercise overseen by James Blair, the political director of the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee. A small team was set up to draft the platform. A speechwriter, Vince Haley, took the lead. There were only a handful of people on a list of those receiving the text.”

Once the text was drafted, Trump’s closest advisers reviewed it, cut it, and confirmed it conformed to his style and syntax. At that point Trump made his final edits. Not a smidgeon of work was left to be done at the convention itself. The thousands of delegates, a good number of whom were anticipating participating in crafting the platform, found there was nothing left for them to do. Everything had been done – so far as the party platform was concerned every “I” had already been dotted and “T” already crossed.

Is this highly effective leadership? Or highly effective management? Debatable, I suppose, especially since the words mean different things to different people. Still, seems clear that a small band of highly skilled and dedicated loyalists does not require superior leadership to make it a well-oiled machine. What it does require is superior management. In this case it required 1) Trump’s keeping his eye on the prize; 2) Trump’s recognizing that to win the prize work had to be done; and 3) Trump’s understanding that this work required him to recruit a small number of people who were exceptionally smart and exceptionally committed to his cause – his personal, political cause.

To his credit then, Trump has succeeded not only in leading his enormous, enthusiastic base. He similarly succeeded in managing a small group of activists and administrators who excel at sculpting a world in his image.

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*For an extended discussion of this issue see Barbara Kellerman, Professionalizing Leadership (Oxford University Press, 2018).

** Warren Bennis, On Becoming a Leader (Perseus, originally published in 1989).

Tuesday: He just doesn’t get it.

Wednesday: He really doesn’t get it.

Thursday: What will it take for him to get it?

Friday: I’m starting to get furious that he’s not getting it.

Saturday: Why the F doesn’t he get it???!?!

Sunday: He’s the greatest American since Lincoln.*

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*This post was stolen word for word from my son, YA author Tommy Greenwald.

Our fixation on two leaders – Joe Biden and Donald Trump – each vying to be elected American president a second time is so great we cannot focus on the issues. I do not mean policy issues such as abortion and immigration. I mean systemic ones. Especially those that corrupt the political process.

High on this list I put money. Specifically, the astonishing ability of a few of the world’s wealthiest people to influence the outcome of an ostensibly democratic election. Such as Elon Musk. He is the quintessential example of a single individual with so much money and, in consequence, so much power that he is shaping not just the political conversation but the presidential campaign.  

Musk’s money and power are of course entwined. The second is a consequence of the first, for without his having more money than God he would have little or no power.

Musk’s power comes from two sources. The first is X, the social media platform that he owns and that, though weakened in comparison to what it was in the heyday of Twitter (its previous name), still packs a punch. Musk uses X as his personal political platform. He says whatever he wants on the social media outlet, easily and instantly reaching his nearly 190 million followers. He uses X to push and promote people and positions he prefers, and to demean and denigrate those he does not. Musk has already done what no other leader of a social media outlet has done up to now: come out guns blazing for a particular presidential candidate and vowing to help him how he can.

But that’s not the only way that Musk has promised to provide his preference – Trump – with assistance. He has also committed to donating to Trump’s cause a considerable chunk of change. Between now (July) and October Musk will pour $45 million each month into the presidential campaign. This $180 million will be given to American PAC, a political action committee dedicated to reelecting Trump.

To be clear: Musk is not alone in his munificence. For instance, earlier this year billionaire George Soros donated $60 million to Democracy PAC, another political action committee, this one dedicated to helping candidates who are Democrats. Republican candidate for vice-president, J. D. Vance, is another example. He owes his newly elevated status in good part to tech mega mogul, Peter Thiel. In 2022 Thiel saw a young, like-minded politican running for the Senate in Ohio; he decided to support his candidacy to the tune of $15 million. Musk is alone though in that he combines his fortune with his fame to ensure his voice will be heard.

I don’t blame Musk for his behavior for the simple reason that he is an addict. He is a leader who lusts, who is insatiable, who cannot control his cravings for money and power.* This means that for Musk having more money and more power will never suffice. He will always want more of each than he already has. As Churchill warned of Hitler, “His appetite will grow with eating.”

Churchill’s point was of course that Hitler would not – I would claim that he could not – stop of his own volition. If by the late 1930s England and France wanted Hitler to change his aggressive ways, they would have had to compel him to do so. Preferably before Germany invaded Poland, not after.

For Musk’s behavior then I blame not him but us – we the American people. We the American people who have done nearly nothing to rein in social media platforms. We the American people who have done nearly nothing to rein in spending on political campaigns. Leaders like Musk are doing what comes naturally – to them. If we don’t like it, it’s up to us to stop it.    

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For more on leaders who lust see my book of the same title, coauthored with Todd Pittinsky. (Leaders Who Lust: Power, Money, Sex, Success, Legitimacy, Legacy, Cambridge University Press, 2021.)

The images of former President Donald Trump in the immediate wake of the attempt on his life – his face is bloodied, and his fist is raised – are already iconic. His defiance in crisis, his preternatural poise given the circumstance, are striking no matter your political persuasion.

Moreover, for the moment the moment feels transformative. Whatever the ultimate outcome of the election, Trump has gained on Biden. If the debate revealed for the world to see Biden’s weakness, the attempt on Trump’s life revealed for the world to see Trump’s strength.  

Which raises the question of why. Specifically, what is it about Trump’s response to what happened on Saturday night that is so impressive? That is so striking and seemingly singular that it has impressed itself on our mind’s eye. It is a question to which the great mythologist and storyteller, Joseph Campbell, had an answer. Most famously found in his literary classic, The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

Campbell was a scholar of comparative myth. His expertise, his brilliance, was in comparing myths in one country and culture to those in other countries and cultures. What he found was that some themes repeated themselves throughout history, and that they were not local or national, they were global. They were common to the human condition.

One such was the hero’s quest for adventure. Inevitably he (Campbell’s hero was always a “he”) descended into a dark place, an abyss of some sort, looking for something, though for what was not clear. Truth, perhaps; wisdom, maybe; strength or salvation? Inevitably of course the hero emerged triumphant, having completed a task that was a trial, that was more than could be accomplished by a mere mortal.

Several American heroes perfectly fit the formula. For example, Abraham Lincoln emerged triumphant having survived the crucible of the Civil War. Franklin Roosevelt emerged triumphant despite both his legs being paralyzed by polio. Martin Luther King, Jr.  emerged triumphant, the single greatest hero of the Civil Rights Movement, after his house was badly bombed, wife and child sleeping inside; and after he endured being relentlessly hunted and hounded.  

Does Donald J. Trump rival their astonishments? Not hardly. But let’s face it: it sometimes seems he has near magical powers. Powers to escape responsibility. And to survive, even surmount personal, political, legal and financial crises.

• His entire life Trump has paid little price for his wrongdoings, his grifting and chiseling, and then some.
• During his one term presidency he was twice impeached only to be twice acquitted.
• Since he’s been out of the White House, whatever the strength of the several legal cases against him, most have been either derailed or delayed.
• The Supreme Court did him an enormous personal and political favor with its recent ruling in strong support of executive immunity – a decision that could save him from several prosecutions should there be a second Trump presidency. .
• That assassination attempt against Trump resulted in two people dead (one the would-be assassin) and two critically injured. Trump meantime escaped the murder and mayhem with a grazed right ear.

This is not exactly the stuff of archetypical heroes. Nor is it the archetypical hero’s journey that Campbell had in mind. Trump is not another Lincoln, Roosevelt or King. Still, we are, it must be acknowledged, watching man who is extra-ordinary. An outlaw who’s always a step ahead of the law. An establishment outsider who’s metamorphosed into the consummate insider. A gambler who’s continuing to beat the odds. A magician whose greatest trick is to pull himself out of a hat. A survivor with nine lives.  

Withal, I do not minimize Trump’s brush with death. The question is, will the whiff of death, his own, change him? If he has in him even a smidgeon of heroism, it will. If he does not, it will not.

Joseph Campbell on the hero’s journey:

It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure. The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out the source of what you are looking for.

The prospect of Donald Trump returning to the White House for a second time is as alarming as appalling. Which is precisely why the division right now among Democrats – should President Joe Biden stay or go? – is so unsettling.

Memories are short, and this too shall pass. Whoever leads the Democratic ticket will have a unified party around him, or her. But… the fact that Biden’s refusal to exit the political stage has brought Americans to this point is lamentable. If the Democrats win big in November – with whoever is at the top of the ticket – all will be semi-forgotten and semi-forgiven. But if they do not, and if, worst case scenario, the Republicans win big in November, Biden’s name will forever be blackened.  

So far as I am concerned, his disasrous performance in the recent “debate” is not relevant.

So far as I am concerned, what today’s polls say or don’t say is not relevant.

So far as I am concerned, how he performs later today in that NATO press conference is not relevant.

So far as I am concerned, the fact that his administration gets high marks on different subjects is not relevant.

What is relevant is that a critical part of Biden’s job – of any leader’s job – is to prepare for his succession.

Given his age, and given that Trump never got off the political stage, and given that this left the American experiment singularly vulnerable, President Biden should have planned from day one of his presidency for who would succeed him. Specifically, he would have promised the American people that his would be a one term presidency – and meant it. He would have chosen a vice president who by wide agreement would have been a worthy successor. He would have mentored the woman he did choose as his vice president, preparing Kamala Harris to succeed him, either should it be suddenly necessary or for when his single term was over. He would have fostered other possible successors, especially promising younger Democrats with visibility on the national stage. He would’ve spoken to senior Democratic leaders such as Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Hakeem Jeffries, and James Clyburn, asking for their input on who might someday succeed him. He would have long ago been listening to the American people who long ago worried that for a second term Biden’s age alone was a disqualifier.

But Biden did none of these. To the contrary, he is still digging in, refusing to quit his day job unless and until he is, almost literally, pushed.

Some two weeks before that disastrous debate I posted to this site a piece titled, “Biden Shakespearean.” I’ve thought for some time that whatever his virtues, and they are many, he had what could become a fatal flaw. I wrote this:

Shakespeare’s tragedies – such as Hamlet, Henry V, and Julius Caesar – all have heroes with tragic flaws…. They are leaders with followers over whom they rule. But there is nevertheless a chink in their armor, a flaw that is not, simply, a defect. It is a flaw that is fatal, that leads ultimately to disaster, even to death. Is Biden so afflicted? …. Has his unquenchable ambition been his fatal flaw?  

There is a reason George Washington has been called the “Father of His Country.” It is because a great leader is like a great parent. One of their tasks is to prepare, and gracefully usher in the next, younger generation. And then there is the other, subsequent task. To do as Washington did – to leave when the time comes.

Neither is a lesson that Biden learned.

One of my mid-March posts was a radical relook at the gender gap.* Why I wondered were still so few women in top positions of American leadership and management. To answer the question, I surfaced a topic that’s typically taboo. The differences, the determinative differences, between women and men – both physically and psychologically.

In the post and in a chapter for a forthcoming volume on women and leadership, I referenced the impact on women of, for example, menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, breast-feeding, and menopause. I included on this list fertility issues, which few men attempt to address but many women, about ten percent of women, do.

Today’s post is an update on women and fertility – specifically on what some women do to slow the biological clock by freezing their eggs. Their hope is to make it easier for them to have a baby later in life, typically in their mid-to-late thirties and early to mid-forties.**

Of course, many women don’t know that freezing their eggs for the purpose of getting pregnant at an older age is even possible. Further, many women who do know and would like the opportunity do not have the resources – financial, personal, professional – to undertake fertility treatments. Finally, most women who do know about freezing their eggs and who do have the resources either never consider or decide against fertility treatments.

But in recent years the number of women who freeze their eggs has shot up and it’s growing every year. “In 2015 there were about 7,600 egg freezing cycles recorded nationwide, and by 2022 the number hit 29,803, a nearly 300 percent increase.” Moreover, in some white-collar industries some companies cover the costs of fertility treatments – not out of the kindness of their hearts but because they are competing for talent.

But people should understand that fertility treatments are one of the reasons why women pay a much greater professional price than do men for the physical and psychological differences between them. It is women not men who go through the egg freezing cycle, which starts when they inject themselves once or sometimes twice a day with hormones. The cycle takes two weeks; it ends when a physician extracts however many healthy eggs with a needle. Further, to increase their chances of someday having a viable pregnancy, some women go through the cycle more than once.

On the surface this might seem no more than fourteen days of inconvenience. Fourteen days during which women might well be unable to conduct business as usual. But the effects of such treatments are experienced not once in a woman’s lifetime but twice.

First, in the present, given fertility treatments sometimes have unpleasant or even debilitating physical side effects such as headaches and cramping.  Further are psychological effects – issues involving fertility can be distracting as well as draining. In an article that appeared last year in Time, one woman described her experience this way: “After countless negative pregnancy tests, a second infertility diagnosis, and a miscarriage that nearly broke me, my world quickly started to revolve around getting pregnant. I used every fertility app under the sun; cut alcohol; followed the ‘fertility’ diet religiously; I even hired a spiritual healer.”  

Second, are the future effects of fertility treatments. While their purpose is to maintain the option of having a baby, the point is for this to happen usually five, ten, or even fifteen years down the line. This means that the ultimate outcome of a successful fertility treatment is likely to coincide with when women are hitting their professional stride. When they are most likely already to be in or to attain high ranking positions of management and leadership.

Let’s be clear. Being pregnant, giving birth, breast feeding (which over 80% of American women do), and for the indefinite future caring for a child is the ultimate personal commitment. Which inevitably means it is the ultimate professional distraction. If, therefore, a woman gives birth in, say, her late thirties or forties, to assume this will have no impact whatsoever on her ability or ambition is to assume something without evidence that is, moreover, counterintuitive.  

Women who are determined someday to lead or manage should make no mistake. Until the workplace is more forgiving, and exercising leadership is less demanding, fertility treatments might someday in some way incur a professional price. I am not insisting that they will. I am suggesting that there is a good chance they might.

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*A Radical Relook at the Gender Gap – Barbara Kellerman

** Some of the information as well as the quote in this post are from this New York Times article:  https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/29/business/egg-freezing-fertility-benefits.html

Today is Independence Day, July 4^th, 2024. Given the day is serious as well as celebratory, I thought to provide a primer. A simple primer as a reminder of what this holiday has meant in the past – and what it could mean in the future.

The first American Revolution was fought by American colonists against the Kingdom of Great Britain. Their original struggle was for greater autonomy within the British political system. But when they realized they could not get the freedoms they wanted, the colonists rebelled against the system itself. The leaders of the American Revolution rebelled against the leader of Great Britain, the King of England, George III.

Independence Day commemorates ratification of the Declaration of Independence. It commemorates the triumph of the leaders of the first American Revolution against the leader of Great Britian, a ragtag victory that ended in the establishment of the United States of America on July 4, 1776. 

George Washington was the greatest leader of the Revolutionary War period. He was a military hero, commander in chief of the Continental Army that fought for and won independence. And he was a political hero, first as president of the Continental Congress which hammered out and finally ratified the Constitution. Second as first president of the United States, a post to which he was twice unanimously elected by the Electoral College.

The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States. It was ratified in 1788, but it is not frozen in time. It has since had 27 amendments, the first 10 known as the Bill of Rights. The Constitution remains as it originally was: an object of contention not only among political leaders but intellectual ones, in the law first and foremost, who interpret it differently, sometimes radically differently.

The Heritage Foundation is a contemporary, activist conservative think tank. It has played a leading role in the American conservative movement since the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Moreover, it has taken on greatly increased importance in recent years, during what became in time Donald Trump’s third campaign for the White House.

Spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation is Project 2025, an extraordinarily ambitious plan to reshape the federal government. Among its most important goals is to consolidate power in the hands of the executive, at the expense of the other two branches of government. If Trump wins the November election, Project 2025 will be the blueprint for his second term. Critics are not happy. They assert the Project would undermine the rule of law, the separation of powers, and even the separation of church and state. Republicans though are making no secret of their intentions.     

“The Second American Revolution” is a phrase recently used by Kevin Roberts. Roberts is president of the Heritage Foundation. He used the word “revolution” to state his intention with crystalline clarity. Specifically, to transform Project 2025 from theory to practice – which is to say to to transform American government. Said Roberts: “We are in the process of the Second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

While the idea of a second American Revolution is anathema to some Americans, many others are attracted to it. Attracted to a conception of leadership in America that was just bolstered by the Supreme Court, whose recent rulings are completely in keeping with Project 2025. To make the American presidency far more “imperial” than it has ever been before.

But, hey, not to worry. If the First American Revolution eventually resulted in a federal holiday, the Second American Revolution is bound to as well. Just think of it as a trade-off – you give us an autocracy and we’ll give you another day off!

Most people who are leadership experts are like most people who are not. We focus or even fixate on the leader – often to the exclusion of everyone and everything else. But yesterday’s decision by the Supreme Court of the United States to expand presidential power was a stark reminder that leadership is not a person. It is a system! A system that consists of three parts, each of which is of equal importance: Part I is the leader. Part II are the followers. And part III is the context within which the leader and the followers are situated.

Yesterday’s court decision changed the context within which presidential power is exercised. By giving the chief executive wider legal leeway – specifically, here, giving former President Donald Trump substantial immunity from charges that he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election – it expanded the power of the executive.

If you believe in a very strong presidency this is a good thing. If you do not – if you are persuaded of the virtues of checks and balances, one branch of government no more powerful than the other two – this is not a good thing. To give you a sense of the exceedingly strong dissent, a short quote from Sonia Sotomajor, one of three liberal justices that remain on the nine-member court: “Today’s decision to grant former President’s criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the Presidency. It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of government, that no man is above the law.” (Italics mine.)

Among the framers of the American constitution no single issue was as divisive as the amount of power granted the American president. On the one side were those like James Madison who strongly believed in power being equally distributed among the three branches: the executive, legislative, and judicial. On the other side were those like Alexander Hamilton who was concerned that without a strong executive the new federal government, composed of 13 previously independent colonies, would not hold.

No accident then that it was Hamilton, known to favor a muscular presidency, who penned paper number 69. The Federalist Papers were a collection of 85 articles and essays written by Madison, Hamilton, and John Jay, published in the late 1780s. Their purpose was propaganda – to persuade voters of the newly created United States to ratify the proposed Constitution. If there was a single hook on which the authors hung their case it was the American presidency. It was to assure voters their president would not be a king – would in no important way resemble the King of England against whom the bloody Revolutionary War had only recently been fought.

To this end Hamilton argued in paper number 69 that the proposed American presidency bore no liking to the detested British monarchy. He noted, for example, that unlike the king the president was to be elected and only for four years. That unlike the king the president was vulnerable to being impeached. That unlike the king the president did not have absolute power to enact or overturn a piece of legislation. That unlike the king the president did not have absolute power over the militia. That unlike the king the president would need the advice and consent of the Senate before signing a treaty.     

America’s Founders and Framers would be stunned to find that well over two centuries after country’s constitution was ratified it is still being fiercely fought over. For we should make no mistake. The decision issued yesterday by the nation’s highest court addresses the same question as at the center of the Constitutional Convention. Is the president a king in that he is – as was George III – above the law?