Prince Barack

I would like to recruit Barack Obama to the Whig party; as candidate for Prince of the North, rather than president. A great many people seem to share my sense that he literally embodies America's diverse history and idealism, European, African and Asian. He has devoted himself to public service and is just the face we would like to hold out to the world -- like Princess Diana and President John F. Kennedy -- an aristocratic and attractive champion of the disadvantaged. The difficulty with our constitutional system is that the president has to be an able commander-in-chief and chief magistrate, as well as the embodiment of the nation. The Whig project is to separate the two functions, and who better to represent that program than the ideal royal, Barack Obama. You will object that he is too intelligent to be a royal, which is a point well taken. But perhaps we can begin a new tradition. . . .