May 3, 2007
Presidents and Monarchs II Posted by Alexander Burns at 11:10 AM EST Despite our continued and intractable disagreement, I don’t mind carrying on my conversation with John Steele Gordon about monarchies and Presidents. Mr. Gordon writes of his exchange with me: “On this subject, I think partially with my heart; he, it seems, only with his brain.” Maybe so, but if one is going to do some thinking, the brain doesn’t seem like a bad organ to use. Naturally, a little sentimentality is understandable in dealing with an institution like the monarchy. To quote Mr. Gordon, though: “A few points.” First, it’s not entirely true that “Buckingham Palace is not maintained with public monies, but with the gate receipts of people who pay to see the various royal palaces.” Last summer, due to a tight budget and expanding costs, the managers of Buckingham Palace had to appeal directly to the state for help with funding. Alan Reid, the Queen’s accountant, told the Times of London: “We are being squeezed by our water, gas and electricity bills, which last year were £2.1 million . . . leaving less for essential maintenance work at a time when the building industry is subject to higher than average inflation.” This request for additional funding came, by the way, on top of a previous annual grant of fifteen million pounds for royal palaces. Furthermore, it seems that not all of this money comes from gate receipts. Reid, at the time, explained that raising entrance fees was not an acceptable way of meeting the Queen’s revenue needs, as the monarch should not be “over-commercialised.” I’ll add, at this point, that I’m not an expert on Britain’s budget, so if I have, for whatever reason, misunderstood the funding of royal properties, I’d be grateful to Mr. Gordon for some hard information showing me where I’ve gone astray. Otherwise, it looks like Buckingham really is a “private residence paid for with public monies.” I’m not entirely unsympathetic to Mr. Gordon’s argument that I should be “a little more forgiving” of royal family members, “as perfection is hard to come by. Both princes and Presidents are made of the same stuff, human clay, and therefore equally miserable sinners.” This might be true. I suppose my point is, few people expect absolutely flawless personal conduct from a President, whereas it’s essentially the only thing that someone expects from a twenty-first-century Western European monarch. Fortunately for some Presidents, poor personal conduct or failure to “embody the nation’s spirit” can be balanced out by deft policy formulation and excellent governing skills. These days, a monarch—perhaps, one day, King Charles III—has no such alternative route to success. If citizens have to go through the exercise of pretending a leader is “Dei Gratia Regina,” they have a right to expect a record of truly exemplary comportment from that person. There’s really nothing else they can ask for. In the end, though, I’m not sure I agree with Mr. Gordon that there’s not much heart in my position. I have little patience for the monarchy, but I don’t think the alternative is necessarily so dry and unromantic. While Mr. Gordon disparages the office of prime minister as one for a “worn-out bureaucrat (the usual occupant of the office of head of state in a parliamentary government),” I’d argue that there is more than a little glory in the succession of leaders from Walpole to the Pitts, to Wellington and Peel, running straight down to Thatcher and Blair. Maybe they haven’t ruled by the grace of God, but if they’ve done their jobs well, ruling by the grace of elections will do for me.
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