The intent of the Founding Fathers was that hard-working and honest farmers, craftsmen and merchants would elect Representatives, Senators and Presidents with an eye to the interests of their communities, states and nation. They assumed, these grave men in their frock coats and high collars, that those elected would be men such as themselves. Men of parts, of education, of substance and integrity. Men who undertook to serve as an act of civic responsibility. A typically 18rh Century, Romantic view of Mankind, based on an assumption of innate goodness.

They did not anticipate, and would be horrified at, the existence of a 'political class'; professional politicians making a career out of what they saw as a duty. People who have no intention of serving their term, then going back to their farms and businesses, but who aspire to rise from post to post, and to hold onto power as long as they can. They would not, I think, be horrified at the extensions of the franchise, seeing that women, People of Colour and Native Americans now number among the farmers, craftsmen and merchants they envisaged as being voters.

Our British Constitution is not a single document, based on Enlightenment thinking ad lofty ideals, but is bodied in every line of Statute and Common Law, each the result of decades, if not centuries, of bitter and too often bloody experience. Which is why it contains far stricter limitations on the power of government than the American one does, and why Boris Johnson does not wield a tenth of the personal power Trump does.