Another great post from Richard Fernandez today.
Give me the power and I will make the trains run on time. Make me Queen and I shall give you bread. Truly great men can resist the temptation to turn themselves into autocrats. King George III asked his American painter, Benjamin West, what George Washington would do after winning independence. “West replied, ‘They say he will return to his farm.’ ‘If he does that,” the incredulous monarch said, ‘he will be the greatest man in the world.’”
But we live in a lesser age. And modern pygmies would rather be gimcrack kings than be remembered as a president of the United States of America. Should anyone succeed at “Caesarism” there might be personal glory in it a spell. But Caesar would still live under the Hollow Crown and such a system would bring lasting instability to the magnificent — and regrettably ordinary — Republic.
Such is our fate.