WE RECOGNIZE OUR MISTAKE:

[Y]es, we did fight a revolution to gain our independence from Britain; but our quarrel was with Parliament, not with the reigning monarch of the day. (Indeed, many Founders had hoped that King George III might be sympathetic to their grievances, and petitioned him to intervene with Parliament on their behalf.)

 

For that matter, if anyone doubts that Americans are susceptible to the lure of constitutional monarchy, they need only contemplate the status and trappings of the modern presidency. When Senator Mitch McConnell strides into a room, the Marine Band does not strike up "Hail to the Majority Leader." And so far as I am aware, no one outside the John Roberts household refers to the wife of the chief justice of the United States as "First Lady."

Something in and around Buckingham Palace fulfills a need still lurking in the American consciousness.

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