His Royal Highness, The President of the United States

Our form of government seems to have undergone a fundamental change over these past twenty years. The Founding Fathers pictured a Representative Democracy of States with a limited central government present for the common good of the people occupying those states. One of the fundamental principles of  those representatives was that they were honest, interested in the good of the people, and they were no better than the people they represented. That no longer appears to be the case. Our presidency has changed, starting openly with Richard M. Nixon’s statement about the Watergate break in, “It is not illegal when the President does it!” Since then, George Bush urged the passage of the “Patriot Act” which goes around the principles of privacy and due process, and he allowed the use of torture in interrogation, which compromised International Law, and Barack Obama ordered the execution of American citizens without trial. Recently, Obama and Holder took steps to show the media who is Boss when they committed the act of confiscating reporters private emails and other records to try to learn who leaked information that they did not want known. Not too long ago, it was Obama who told military secrets to reporters to try to bolster his chances for reelection. Another case of, “It is not illegal when the President does it.”
The Founding Fathers fashioned our government to have checks and balances, with the Congress independent of the Executive, and the Supreme Court independent of both. But the Congress passed and renewed the Patriot Act, and the Supreme Court upheld it when it was challenged. Nixon was impeached, but we have become too complacent and tolerant of the misdeeds of those governing. This has to stop. The Senate has changed from a rule of the majority, to a Rule of the Supermajority by abusing the filibuster and cloture rules. Congress has passed laws that give them health care benefits better than any of their constituents can obtain. Their retirement benefits are not anything that our Founding Fathers would have envisioned.  The Congress is changing into a Royal Court of the Presidency, and the Supreme Court is in danger of becoming less powerful because of the approval process by the Senate.
We used to have a media who watched the government and were critical and educated in their coverage. Today, the media is dominated by TV and more interested in ratings than in the public good. With the President now throwing a kink in their ability to get at the truth, and the media no longer doing their job of delving
deeply to get at the truth, (in the interest of time and ratings) we have lost one of our allies that used to offer the last check and balance to keep government honest.
Those who run for office for the first time are usually honest and well meaning but, once elected, learn that it is not the value of their ideas that wins the day, rather it is who they know and what deals they can make, and finally, what do they have to not do or not say, to get reelected. After a short while, it is reelection that seems to govern their decisions, not what is good for the people they represent. They give new meaning to , “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Until our elected officials come down to Earth, and accept the fact that they have been elected to represent you and me, not to put themselves above us, we will not have that government envisioned by Lincoln, a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people”. Instead we will have a Royal Government in which those governing set themselves above the governed and are more interested in promoting their interests, than those of the governed.