By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News

Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — January 22, 2026

What foreign readers are seeing

From outside the United States, American politics can look chaotic, theatrical, or even absurd. Many headlines focus on personalities and daily controversy. That coverage often misses the more important question for readers in Europe and Asia: why the system seems unable to correct itself quickly, even when a president is widely viewed as erratic or destabilizing.

This essay begins a weekly series that explains the mechanics behind that paralysis. The goal is not persuasion. The goal is clarity.

The key difference: the U.S. is not a parliamentary system

In many parliamentary democracies, governments can fall quickly. Coalitions collapse. Prime ministers can be replaced through internal party action or votes of no confidence. That structure creates faster political correction, for better or worse.

The U.S. system is built differently. It separates executive power from the legislature and makes removal of a president deliberately difficult. That design was intended to reduce coups, prevent rapid power swings, and limit constant instability.

It also means that when a president behaves recklessly, the system does not “snap back” quickly.

What it takes to remove a U.S. president

Once inaugurated, a U.S. president remains in office unless one of a few narrow outcomes occurs:

  • Resignation
  • Death
  • Removal after impeachment and conviction
  • A declaration of inability under the 25th Amendment (rare and politically difficult)

Public disapproval does not remove a president. Protests do not remove a president. Bad decisions do not automatically remove a president. Even severe controversy does not remove a president unless it translates into a legal and political process that meets constitutional thresholds.

This is why American politics can feel frozen during crisis. The system is not designed for fast correction. It is designed for slow, rule-bound correction.

Why this matters in Europe and Asia

For governments and publics in Europe, American instability affects treaty reliability, defense planning, sanctions policy, trade decisions, and long-term investment assumptions. Even when official policy does not change overnight, uncertainty changes how other states plan.

For countries in Asia, including the Philippines, the stakes are more direct. U.S. behavior influences regional security posture, alliance credibility, and diplomatic leverage in the Indo-Pacific. When U.S. leadership appears inconsistent or impulsive, other actors adjust. That adjustment can shape the balance of power in ways that outlast a single election cycle.

What this series will do

This series will explain how American power actually moves—or fails to move—inside the current system. It will focus on:

  • what is legally possible versus what is politically likely,
  • what events change constraints and timelines,
  • and what signals matter for foreign planning.

The central point is simple: what looks like dysfunction is often procedure operating exactly as written, even when the results look irrational from the outside.

For more social commentary, please see Occupy 2.5 at https://Occupy25.com

This essay will be archived as part of the ongoing WPS News Monthly Brief Series available through Amazon.

References

U.S. Const. art. I–II; amends. XX–XXV.
Congressional Research Service. (n.d.). Impeachment and removal; presidential succession and inability (various reports).
United States Senate. (n.d.). Impeachment: Powers and procedures.

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