read Machiavelli. If they had, they would certainly never have said so, since then as now his name is associated in the popular imagination entirely with The Prince, not the Discourses. Yet much in the Constitution is more suggestive of Machiavelli's emphasis on active contest and interplay of political power as a key to republican strength, than of more passive, static conceptions of the idea republic. The provision of a strong executive, the mechanism for impeaching him in the event that he overreached, and the emphasis on a militia subject to national authority and discipline, are all elements that Machiavelli would have approved.
The most striking element of the constitutional system is the presidency. In establishing a single chief executive, combining civil administration with the role of military commander-in-chief, the drafters of the Constitution pushed very near to the point of creating a constitutional elective monarch. (It is perhaps notable that "president" has come in modern times to be the usual title of autocrats around the world.) The
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