What precisely is a “head of state”? In 1981, outgoing President Carter was able to inform the nation:
In a few days I will lay down my official responsibilities in this office, to take up once more the only title in our democracy superior to that of President, the title of citizen.
These lines descend directly from President Lincoln’s hymn above time, a threnody for government of the people, by the people, for the people. President Lincoln, who was denied the opportunity to lay down his official responsibilities, delivered his address at Gettysburg on 19 November 1863.
On the same day some 1,400 years before in AD 461 Libius Severus was declared emperor of the western Roman empire. We know so little of Severus we do not even know whether he was the puppet of the magister militum Ricimer, but we have good grounds to infer it because power, even titular power, abhors a vacuum.
When Dwight D Eisenhower preceded President Carter by a quarter century, he became merely “Commander-in-Chief”. Two years earlier on 19 November 1950 he received something different and in a titular sense something more when he was appointed NATO’s “Supreme Commander”.
Within the nation of Uganda, a nation with colonial boundaries, there is the kingdom of Buganda, a Bantu kingdom within a republic. On 19 November 1924, Edward Frederick Mutesa was born in Kampala. He succeeded his father and became the 35th kabaka or king in November 1939 and was crowned on his 18th birthday, 19 November 1942.
The emergence of Uganda as an independent nation was as complex as any post-colonial arrangement. In its first phase, Uganda was an independent member of the Commonwealth with Queen Elizabeth II the head of state as the Queen of Uganda. When Uganda became a republic with Mutesa as its first president, he remained kabaka of Buganda, a head of state and a head of a state within a state. Milton Obote became prime minister. When Mutesa and Obote fell out, Obote called in General Idi Amin, a coup occurred, and Amin in turn ousted Obote from the presidency a few years later. Mutesa died in London in exile. When his body was returned, the now President Amin arranged for a state funeral. Mutesa was buried holding his appointment a decade earlier as a Knight Commander of the British Empire.
Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin was born to a peasant family on 19 November 1875. He was active in the Russian revolution, emphasis on “Russian”. The reason for the emphasis is that the first head of state of Soviet Russia was arguably Yakov Sverdlov who died of the Spanish flu in 1919 and who was replaced by Kalinin. It was Kalinin who became Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR in 1922 and then Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet in 1938, in which job he remained until retiring after the war.
Kalinan had two things in his favour during those difficult years. First, he was one of the few peasants in the leadership and this was excellent for propaganda. Second, he had early the good fortune to become a friend of one of Stalin’s relatives.
Stalin’s successor Nikita Krushchev said of Kalinan:
I don’t know what practical work Kalinin carried out under Lenin. But under Stalin he was the nominal signatory of all decrees, while in reality he rarely took part in government business.
This is the best definition of a titular head of state I know.
And what of a head of state’s spouse? The spouse, especially in more public systems, can often play an important role in a wider idea of social stability. A happy couple with an engaged spouse is a useful symbol.
Running down the list of heads of state mentioned today, barring Severus whose marital status is as fogged as the rest of his life.
As befits a nation where publicity is lifeblood, the US has various rankings for First Ladies. One is the Siena (College) Research Institute. Mrs Carter is generally in the top 10, while a press release in 2023 states “Mary Todd Lincoln Up From Usual Last Place”, perhaps a recognition of the complex grief underlying her persona. It ought not be forgotten that a beau of her early life was Stephen Douglas, later in competition with her husband for the ultimate goal.
Mamie Eisenhower is an interesting case. Her tenure falls between the suffragette movement in general and Eleanor Roosevelt’s wide activism and the later ERA movement with, by the bye, Roslyn Carter’s involvement. On the one hand, Eisenhower stood beside or behind her husband, and on the other she left her individual stamp. In this she was markedly different from yet exactly the same as her successor. There is a well-known story of Jacqueline Kennedy being shown around the White House in a pain unappreciated by Eisenhower nothwithstanding everyone knowing that she was recovering from John Junior’s delivery a fortnight before. Which underlies an interesting dynastic tension. Eisenhower’s son John would serve as ambassador under Richard Nixon, who of course was defeated by Kennedy in 1960, while Eisenhower’s grandson David, John’s son, would marry Nixon’s daughter Julie in 1968.
Musaka is recorded as having 13 consorts with issue of 12 sons and nine daughters. More interesting is the relatively recent – ie 20th century – development of the Nnabagereka, the title of the Queen consort, being in Musaka’s case the first consort. The traditional power structure involved the Queen mother, the Namasole, and the kabaka’s sister or predominant sister, the Lubuga, holding more status that a consort. The transition perhaps evidences that change affects all things including polygyny.
Queen Elizabeth’s consort was famously Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, whose own difficulty in forging an identity was often compared to the Queen’s great-great-grandfather Queen Victoria’s husband Prince Albert. No such difficulty for the only reigning Albert, Prince Albert of Monaco, who was enthroned on 19 November 2005, Monaco’s national day or in French La Fête du Prince.
In Russia, things are done differently. Kalinan had the peculiar difficulty of presiding over the imprisonment of his wife for criticising Stalin, his constitutional junior. Around the same time and as the world headed into its second great war, Stalin developed a fascination with rehabilitating Ivan the Terrible, notwithstanding the fact that this head of state had contributed to “the time of troubles” following his death by striking his heir presumptive the Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich in the head with a staff, the son dying on 19 November 1581.
Ilya Repin, 1885