Queen Elizabeth II – WSJ

Her country needed that institution in ways foreigners often find hard to understand. As the old empire evolved into a Commonwealth, and as the nations within the United Kingdom struggled toward new constitutional arrangements, the monarchy has proven to be a steadying influence for a country in transition from a great power to a still significant one.

Much of this is the result of Queen Elizabeth s approach to her office. She eschewed politics in a way her son and heir Charles has found difficult to do. Her personal views on the important political questions of her reign, from the Suez crisis to Brexit, remained unknown for many years after events and sometimes to this day. She mastered the art of being present in the public eye without attracting the tabloid headlines that have marked her children and grandchildren.

These traits made her that rarest of things in the modern world: a widely beloved national figure also respected around the world. In moments of crisis, she was the one to whom Britons looked for inspiration most recently with her important We Will Meet Again address at the height of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. Her unique charisma tended to obscure the anachronism that is any hereditary monarchy, which leaves to fate the question of whether a country will get the leader it needs at the right time.

via www.wsj.com

We here in the US do *not* leave it to fate and thus are free to take the step of deliberately choosing the worst person at the worst time to be our political leader and exemplar.