At the constitutional convention, which met in the aftermath of the War of Independence, the delegates agreed that America's new head of state should be an elected president rather than an hereditary monarch.
But this was far from being the whole of the story. To begin with, the denunciation - and the demonisation - of King George III in the Declaration of Independence was based on a seriously misleading exaggeration of his royal prerogatives. Those powers were increasingly being claimed by the politicians, and insofar as George III did re-affirm Britain's right to rule, to tax and to legislate for the American colonies, he believed he was asserting the sovereignty of the British parliament rather than that of the British crown.
But ironically, when the leaders of the American Revolution tried to work out what powers they should give to the newly created American presidency, the only models available were those of contemporary European monarchies, and especially the British. And so the founding fathers gave to the American presidency just those powers they erroneously believed King George III still possessed - to appoint and dismiss his cabinet, to make war and peace, and to veto bills sent up by the legislature. From the outset, then, the American presidency was vested with what might be termed monarchical authority, which meant that it really was a form of elective kingship. So when Henry Clay, the leader of the American Whig Party regretted that, under Andrew Jackson, the presidency was "rapidly tending towards an elective monarchy", he was in error because it had been an elective monarchy from the very beginning.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32741802
