הִנְנוּ עַצְמְךָ וּבְשָׂרְךָ אֲנָחְנוּWe are your bone and your flesh.— 2 Samuel 5:1

There was once a country that took particular pride in having no king. It had ministers, judges, generals, advisers, parties, elections and an assembly whose members spoke so frequently in the name of the people that the people occasionally wondered whether their own presence was still required. But there was no throne. This was repeated with satisfaction on national holidays, at school ceremonies and whenever foreign visitors asked how the country governed itself.

The throne, everyone agreed, belonged to another age. It remained in museums, sacred texts and stories about warriors who had united tribes, conquered cities and received instructions unavailable to ordinary men. Those kings had lived before parliamentary committees, constitutional lawyers and televised exit polls. They made decisions beneath the open sky, often with swords nearby, and no one required them to explain themselves before a subcommittee.

The country had improved upon this arrangement. Anointed rulers had been replaced by temporary officeholders, royal decrees by legislation and struggles over succession by elections. Leaders could govern, but they could not own the government. They could command armies, but only through offices entrusted to them for a time. They could speak in the name of the nation, but only until the nation selected someone else. This was widely regarded as progress.

Then there arose a leader who remained in power long enough for the distinction between the country and his government to become inconvenient.

At first, no one called him a king. That would have sounded absurd. He wore ordinary suits, appeared before cameras and submitted his name to the judgment of voters like everyone else. He spoke of democracy often and with evident feeling. He never asked for a crown. He asked only to be recognized as the man without whom the country could not safely continue.

The request appeared reasonable. The country had enemies, and enemies make exceptionally efficient political advisers. They explain why patience is weakness, criticism is sabotage and every transfer of authority should be postponed until conditions improve. Conditions, regrettably, never improved.

The longer the leader remained in office, the more his supporters discovered that removing him would not amount to an ordinary change of government. It would endanger the country itself. His mistakes became the price of experience, his failures proof of the scale of the dangers he faced, and the charges brought against him evidence of corruption within the institutions investigating him. His endurance became the strongest argument for his........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)