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"And if so, isn't the state of having no king (such as the present time) closer to what God originally intended?"

I see I really didn't address this part.

Remember what G-d told Samuel. "It's not you they abandoned. It's Me!"

I'd say today is exactly like asking for a king.
Just that kings aren't in fashion.
Sure, Israel is surrounded by king after king but they are mostly oppressive tyrants. The fashionable form of government to make the state of Israel like the other countries of the world, the first and second world countries, anyway, was to set up a similar kind of democratic/parliamentary government.

Also remember that the original Zionists were at least anti-religious if not altogether atheistic and they saw the solution to the historical persecution of the Jews as being a piece of land we could call home. Then we woul dbe like everyone else and everyone would leave us alone.
[The fact that we had a piece of land, twice and were thrown out of it, twice, did not seem to make it into their equation.]

That there now exists many non-observant and even a large contingency of observant Jews in government, while certainly an anathema to the hard core, labor zionists, that does not make the knesset a fulfillment of the days of old. Not even closer to.