The criticism is not completely off the mark, and the doubts are not unjustified, given the troubled history of the Presidency in our country. But such doubts are uncalled for on this occasion. For Mr Narayanan has clearly spelt out the limits of the President's role as he sees it. He has contrasted his notion of a working President with not only a rubber stamp President, but also an executive President. By the latter, he means a President, like the US President, who exercises administrative power in his capacity as the head of the executive. What is more, the working Presidency he has defined is not just something that falls arithmetically in between these two extremes. This President has no executive power. He cannot command the administration or the armed forces to do anything on his own, even in an emergency. His role is to act as the guardian of the Constitution, to advise and to warn. In short, far from being something new, Mr Narayanan's concept of the Presidency is as old as parliamentary democracy. For it is precisely what Walter Bagchot, perhaps the greatest constitutional theorist of all time, defined as being the role of the constitutional monarch.