If Only We Had a Parliamentary System

One of the downsides of being one of the oldest Democracies in the world is that there's a lot of early design flaws. Flaws that got improved in future iterations. Parliamentary systems are far better at reacting to changing circumstances than ours is.

Just imagine for a moment if Trump somehow became the Prime Minister of the country. Would he have gotten past a vote of no confidence after the tariffs, let alone everything else he's done? We'd have had snap elections already and moved on a different path.

Right now though we're just entering year two of this debacle and there's no meaningful way to stop it. Congress can impeach, but as we've seen twice now, impeachment is meaningless. Conviction's nearly impossible.

In 2026 we will elect a new Congress, but even if that goes well, I don't see many paths to shutting this down. Congress can certainly choose what budget to pass, but Trump may just ignore them. Subpoenas from Congress can also go ignored and unenforced by a loyalist DOJ.

If we had a parliamentary system, this would be much better. Yes, as the UK demonstrated, it's no guarantee that you won't do stupid things. At least though it puts some limits on how far you can go down the rabbit hole in any given year.