Crowning king of America

We need a royal family.

I know we spent an awful lot of time and revolutionary blood trying to free ourselves from a royal family, but hear me out. America has a lot of problems. We all know that. Nothing can solve all of them, but two issues that seem to keep reappearing are the government’s tendency to ineffectiveness and the media’s tendency to be easily bored.

This is where my brilliant royal family idea comes in to play.

The American government sometimes has difficulty getting everything done (the recent budget crisis comes to mind). Maybe part of the problem is that our government is fairly unique: We have the same person serve as head of state and head of government. We call him Barack Obama.

Most countries (at least the ones that don’t have dictators) have two separate people fill those positions. A head of state takes care of the ceremony (the ribbon cutting, the hand-shaking with other world leaders), leaving the head of government to actually take care of the government part.

But since our president has to do both, it can be hard for him to help work out legislative issues when he also has to be ready to receive the Chinese president.

If we had a royal family, our king or queen could spend the day making small talk with dignitaries and visiting local elementary schools while the head of government could actually, you know, govern.

Even more valuable, we’d have something to talk about on slow news days.

Right now our poor 24-hour news networks are forced to rely on politicians’ sex scandals and the exploits of our lesser celebrities.

But even Charlie Sheen is only amusing for so long before I start wondering why no one in his family loves him enough to get him help.

A royal family solves this problem. Even here across the pond, there has been extensive coverage of Prince William’s upcoming nuptials.

If America had its own monarchy, it would be like a chew toy for the media, something to keep them quiet and entertained so the rest of us can go on about our day.

The only issue I can see is money. It’s distasteful to pay someone to do very little. But it turns out that a monarchy is not that expensive of an institution. The British royal family only costs the average British taxpayer about $2 a year.

It seems like a worthy investment. For less than the cost of a cup of coffee, we too could have our own royal family.

And if we need someone to take up that newly created position, I would be willing to offer my services. For the good of the country, of course.

­— mebinder@indiana.edu