In 2011, when the congressional supercommittee failed to pass a budget, the End of History political scientist Francis Fukuyama denounced republican government for its weakness as evidenced by its inability to pass logical budgets: "The system is deliberately engineered to put obstacles in the way of decisive government, which in turn is the result of a political culture strongly suspicious of centralised power." He praised the British system of passing budgets for its efficacy, "with fewer opportunities to cast vetoes". To some extent, Fukuyama and Buckley's critiques differ only in shifting the blame to different parts of the political apparatus: congressional decline and executive ascent clearly occur in tandem.

Indeed, the annals are scribbled with Americans longingly gazing at Britain for ways out of its political predicaments. Buckley's Anglophilia is at full froth in this book, which includes a lovingly detailed description of a coronation at Westminister Abbey. His point is that reverence for a functionally powerless head of state in Westminster democracies is balanced by irreverence for heads of government. The real modern political tyrants are demagogues and bureaucrats. The Once and Future King is a worthy contribution to the great discourse on liberty and power which has existed and will continue to exist between the great nations on opposite sides of the Atlantic. And yet we ought to also keep in mind the great critic of American democracy Alexis de Tocqueville's observation: "The Americans are much more addicted to the use of general ideas than the English, and entertain a much greater relish for them . . . There is not a mediocre scribbler who does not try his hand at discovering truths applicable to a great kingdom, and who is very ill pleased with himself if he does not succeed in compressing the human race into the compass of an article."