There was a time when American exceptionalism was asserted with the quiet confidence of the righteous. A “shining city on a hill,” it was called, as though constitutional design had bestowed upon the United States a permanent moral altitude. 

That hill has since been exposed beneath the weight of executive aggrandisement, institutional inertia, and jurisprudential mythmaking. 

What remains is still exceptional, though not in the sense originally portrayed. 

America is exceptional in its embrace of practices widely rejected by other liberal democracies: presidents cloaked in immunity, elections auctioned to the highest bidder, courts impotent before clear illegality, and a foundational document so enshrined it resists not only amendment but introspection.

The presidency of George W. Bush strained the Constitution. The presidency of Donald J. Trump has shattered its illusions. 

We now know what too many suspected but were too polite to say aloud: the US Constitution, as interpreted and administered, is not a sturdy bulwark against tyranny. 

It is, in key respects, a parchment promise animated by custom and goodwill, both of which vanish precisely when they are most needed.

Among the gravest shortcomings is the problem of executive discretion. Under the current structure, prosecutorial authority, the veto power, the pardon, and unilateral control over foreign affairs remain largely unchecked. 

These powers, when exercised in bad faith, still benefit from the aura of constitutional legitimacy, despite the fact that no other serious democracy tolerates such unilateralism. 

The US Supreme Court ruling that a sitting president enjoys near-total immunity for official acts has essentially elevated the presidency to that of a regency.

This is not constitutionalism; it is monarchy in civilian dress.

A global outlier

No other mature democracy indulges in such legal fantasy. 

In Germany, the Basic Law subjects even the Chancellor’s official acts to constitutional scrutiny. 

In South Africa, the Constitutional Court has ruled decisively that the President must account for violations of the Constitution. In France, sitting presidents are not beyond the reach of the courts. 

In the US, however, the most powerful elected official on the planet may incite insurrection, obstruct justice, or sabotage lawful institutions under the convenient cloak of executive privilege—and remain untouchable.

If the Trump ruling has accomplished anything, it is to clarify what legal scholars have whispered for years: the US Constitution is not a self-executing restraint. 

It is an invitation to self-restraint, drafted in an era when its authors presumed that officeholders would possess a virtue equal to the power they wielded. That assumption has collapsed, and the edifice built upon it is now visibly crumbling.

To restore constitutional governance, the prosecutorial function must be insulated from executive interference. It is incompatible with the rule of law that a sitting president may direct, suppress, or manipulate prosecutions for political purposes. 

Other countries have long since recognised this danger. In Italy and South Korea, independent prosecutors have brought down sitting and former heads of state. 

In the US, by contrast, the Justice Department is viewed not as a check on the executive, but as a weapon of convenience—useful when needed, disposable when not.

This pattern of deference extends to foreign affairs. The political question doctrine and the state secrets doctrine have metastasised into a kind of blanket immunity for executive action abroad. 

Presidents may unilaterally withdraw from treaties, refuse to comply with international obligations, and even authorise acts bordering on torture or violations of jus cogens norms, all without judicial oversight. 

The deference is so absolute that courts routinely decline to hear cases even where credible allegations of genocide, torture, or unlawful warfare are at stake.

This posture finds no parallel in other democracies. 

The British Supreme Court, in Miller v. Prime Minister, held that the executive could not shut down Parliament for political advantage. In Canada, treaty powers are constrained by Parliament. 

In the US, the president may discard international obligations by fiat. In matters of war, peace, and international human rights, the American executive reigns supreme and is largely unaccountable.

Home truths

Even in the domestic sphere, American democracy remains conspicuously out of step with global norms. 

The Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC sanctified the role of corporate money in political campaigns, equating it with protected speech. 

As a result, elections have become exercises in plutocratic theatre, where influence is auctioned, and policy is the prize. 

This is not the standard in the majority of peer democracies. For example, in the UK, paid political advertisements on television are banned. 

France, Finland, Ireland and Portugal are among other democracies, where strict donation limits preserve electoral integrity. In the US, the ballot box is haunted by the spectre of oligarchy.

The judiciary itself is no longer the restraint it was intended to be. 

Federal judges in the US serve for life—an arrangement that is not only archaic but dangerous. 

The consequence is a judiciary increasingly disconnected from generational norms, immune from democratic correction, and prone to judicial entrenchment. No other liberal democracy allows such tenure. 

For example, in Canada and Australia, judges retire at seventy-five. In South Africa, they retire at seventy. In Germany, they serve fixed terms. 

The American model, a relic of the 18th century, now serves primarily to preserve 18th-century sensibilities. Federalism is not a guarantor of liberty. 

Born of a compromise with slaveholding states, it continues to serve as a mechanism for obstruction and inequity. Nowhere is this more evident than in the fragmentation of healthcare, education, and social services. 

These basic needs, recognised as fundamental rights in much of the world, remain policy preferences in the US, contingent on geography, wealth, and ideology. 

A child’s access to a school or a doctor should not depend on the colour of the state in which they are born.

If the Constitution is to be rehabilitated, it must undergo serious reform. The immunity of presidents from prosecution for unlawful acts must be removed through a constitutional amendment. 

The Department of Justice must be rendered structurally independent from the executive. Campaign finance must be overhauled, and the corrosive effects of Citizens United reversed. Judicial tenure must be capped. 

Federalism must be modernised to permit national action on national problems. And the rights to education, health care, and human dignity must be constitutionally guaranteed.

None of these reforms is likely to be enacted. The American system is hobbled by the very interests that benefit from its dysfunction. 

It is governed by inertia, paralysed by reverence, and defended by those who mistake constitutional veneration for constitutional fidelity. And so, the republic drifts—unprepared for a future it can no longer shape.

What began as a bold experiment in liberty has become an outlier, a system so bound to its origin myths that it is incapable of adapting to its present challenges. 

Exceptionalism remains the operative word. But now, it is exceptionalism of a different, outdated kind. America can no longer pretend to be the shining city on the hill. It is a constitutional empire, cloaked in republican garb, commanding global power without the legal humility that power demands.

The question is not whether this is sustainable. It is whether anyone has the courage to admit that it is not.