The "Tired old man that we elected king" is a reference to US president Ronald Reagan. There are a lot of political overtones in the song, as Henley strongly opposed Reagan's agenda.
The line about "Beating ploughshares into swords" is a distortion of Isaiah 2:4 in which Isaiah describes the end times: "And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." The inversion of the words most likely hints at the decline of the number of family farms and the increase in US military power in the '80s as a signal of the end times of innocence.
Bruce Hornsby played piano on this and wrote this with Henley. Hornsby had a US #1 hit with "The Way It Is."
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