Walter Bagehot: “By another clause of the Federal Constitution the States fix the electoral qualification for voting at a Presidential…”

That a House of Commons may work well it must perform, as we saw, five functions well: it must elect a Ministry well, legislate well, teach the nation well, express the nation's will well, bring matters to the nation's attention well.

And, to the effectual maintenance of such a separation, the exclusion of the President's Ministers from the legislature is essential.

Perhaps such powers as these are what a wise man would most seek to exercise and least fear to possess.

The United States could not have become monarchical, even if the Constitutional Convention had decreed it, even if the component States had ratified it.