"We have no king or queen in this country."

Oh, yes you do! He's called "the president", and he gets to be king of the USA for 4 years....or sometimes 8 years. ;-) No other western democracy has a chief executive who looms so large in their national consciousness as the American president does in yours. He's like an emperor. He's like Caesar.

You don't realize it simply because you're so used to it that you don't notice. You'd have to live in another country for awhile, and then you'd get it.

(Now, when De Gaulle was the leader of France he was like that too. He had such a big ego that he made it that way. It was as if De Gaulle WAS France. That's rare in European democracies these days.)