Democracy and Hereditary Monarchy

The novelty of the American experiment, at least relative to its recent European antedecedents, is usually conceived to consist in the juxtaposition of its Democracy to their Monarchies. However, that concept does not adequately distinguish the inception of a regime from its structure.  For example, a polity in which a plebiscite chooses a ruler-for-life can be classified as both a Democracy and a Monarchy, and some executive powers of a President are unconditional, while those of a Constitutional Monarch might not be.  Instead, the novelty of the American experiment is with respect to the hereditary dimension of those polities, i. e. with respect to the inception of a regime.  In other words, a Hereditary Democracy is a contradictory notion, an antithesis that demonstrates that Democracy is primarily a mode of Political transition, rather than a Political structure.