How political leaders claim to speak for us

Louis, though, was merely stating a fact, one he devoted 72 years and 110 days on the throne to making into the truth of the matter. Stalin and Hitler might well have made the same claim; Putin and Xi Jinping might kid themselves they still could.

Authoritarians purporting to speak in our name and know what is best for us are hardly a new problem, however much we might fret about Duterte, Orban, Bolsonaro or Ortega. "Guided" democracy, divine right, hereditary socialism, indefinite terms in office, one-party states, a President who considered himself "a man after God's own heart", such contortions of the people's will have been with us since time immemorial.

We now need to confront a less serious but insidious problem, in the form of elected democrats who presume to speak on behalf of the people. The signs are easy to spot; just note politicians' references to "the Australian way", "Australians' sacrifice" or to Australian values, habits and sources of national pride. We should stop that trend while we can.

The United States constitution opens with a wonderful phrase: "We, the people". "The people" then commit themselves to form "a more perfect union" in the interests of securing justice, "tranquillity", a common defence, the general welfare and "the blessings of liberty". Jill Lepore reminds us that the original printers "set the type of (the constitution's) soaring preamble with a giant W, as sharp as a bird's claw". So they should have.

Although the American wording is uniquely splendid, if a tad ambitiousits underlying sentiment should be familiar and precious to any democrat. We, the people, intend to dictate terms and remain boss of the show. We, the people, will speak for ourselves: nobody need bother to speak for us or talk down to us.

The American constitution does, however, leave undefined just whose prerogative it is to define what "we, the people" think and feel. Congress, the President, a couple of filibustering senators, the states, the Supreme Court, assorted billionaires and a mob last January might claim that privilege.

Some rulers, notably the Queen of England, use the royal "we" as of right - hereditary, hierarchical, historical right. Her Majesty is simply being ironic. Her royal "we" is emphatically a version of the first person singular, used with no consultation, referring to herself alone, excluding even her idiosyncratic family.

A few other leaders have thought they might plausibly personify their nation, its history and its people. I remember the son of a French friend, coming home from school utterly disconsolate. He had been learning about Napoleon: elite schools, a national bank, the civil code, infrastructure spending, the odd military victory. The teacher had then informed him that the Emperor was, in fact, dead. That pedant was wrong. As a frame of reference, a marker of quality, an epitome of what it means to be French, Napoleon indisputably lives on.

Menachem Begin, terrorist leader turned Prime Minister of Israel, exemplified another variant of that identification of leader and nation. Whenever I talked to Begin, he discussed the history of the Jewish people as though it were enacted in the present continuous tense. The Nazis remained a clear and present danger, the Black Hundreds could be lurking around the corner, Moses and Abraham may offer advice on current problems.

Predictably, many leaders overdo their supposed affinity with we, the people. Throughout 1940 Churchill relied on the first-person plural to summon energy and build confidence. "We will fight on the beaches, we will fight on the landing grounds ..." If the Spitfires had been shot down, who was that "we" going to be - exhausted and defeated evacuees from Dunkirk, a Home Guard with pitiably inadequate weaponry? Churchill's use of "we" was a rhetorical device designed to help drag the English people towards their Prime Minister's own state of dogged defiance.

Year by year, Narendra Modi might be revealing a radical notion of what India should be. Modi might under-estimate the difficulties in pushing through that narrow, personal idea of India at the same time that he over-estimates the capacity of anyone in New Delhi to control events across India.

More recently, Angela Merkel declared that "wir schaffen das" - "we'll cope with this" - when confronted with a massive influx of refugees. She meant that, despite public reservations and anxieties, she herself intended to manage the crisis, on behalf of Germans and in what she perceived as their interest.

Similarly, when John Kennedy concluded the finest of all inaugural addresses by proclaiming, "let us go forth to lead the land we love", the "we" doing that leading was to be based - for both good and ill - in the White House alone.

We, the people, might inquire what our leaders truly expect of us. They prattle on often enough about our remarkable qualities, even if they lack some of those virtues themselves. Take the examples of projection, wishful thinking and media management entangled with Australians' long affection for Bob Hawke and our thinking about him as a repository of Australian values.

Our leaders will always flatter us. Fortitude, resilience, courage, even common sense apparently distinguish we the people, in Australia as in other democracies. Sadly, however, leaders in trouble, stand more in need of obedience, gratitude, docility and loyalty.