I prefer the Jimmy Wales version of authority. The project operates democratically, but Jimmy always retains the ultimate authority to act as a sovereign at the end of the day because he built it, has the reputation of the project to protect, and it's his legacy. The option to fork the project will always be there if the people want new leadership.
Again, I would prefer he retain an unused veto. Who knows, perhaps he's entirely fine with his comment being removed.
The benefits of a sovereign are that they limit the amount of privileges that can be extracted from an political system. Obviously monarchs have their downsides, but if people can just up and fork the project, those downsides are limited.
I obviously can't speak to the politics of the Python Foundation (my favorite language and would buy every single person in this governance discussion a beer), but my point is that these types of monarchs generally have more (Taleb-style) skin in the game than someone who shows up later. More to lose (everything they've built), and so I would generally trust their judgement to care more about the institution as a whole, than about exercising power (which is the entire reason they have effectively given up power in the first place).
a wannabe king is more than welcome to fork this project as it sits, right now, today. and they can be as non-democratic as they want with their own little fifedom.
I have not paid attention in years, and with the acknowledgment that some of the contributors there were their own worst enemy and/or not without sin, but you should really poke around http://wikipediareview.com/ - to see just how untrue that often is.
(I'm talking confidential email lists, whose existence is not to be confirmed, IRC channels, brigading, and far worse).
