America is having a Liz Truss moment. The problem is that America doesn’t have a Liz Truss solution.
Let me take you back to the fall of 2022 when the United Kingdom experienced its own version of political whiplash. In the span of seven weeks, no less than three Prime Ministers (and two monarchs, incidentally) tried to steer the British governmental ship. On September 6, Boris Johnson was forced to resign over a seemingly endless series of scandals. Enter Liz Truss. She lasted forty-nine days, until October 25, when she too was pushed out the black door of 10 Downing Street. Her blunder? Incompetence. Rishi Sunak, the Conservative Party’s third choice, then measured the drapes.
What most people remember of the Truss premiership is the Daily Star wager that a head of lettuce would last longer than Truss. The lettuce won. But Truss’ stint as Prime Minister—the shortest ever, I should note—holds some lessons for America today.
Truss suffered from a self-inflicted political wound. She tried to push through an aggressive tax cut at a time when the financial markets were edgy and inflation was high. She also pledged to increase government spending to counter those stinging inflated prices. As it turned out, hers was a foolish fiscal plan—tax reductions and public spending increases don’t exactly go hand-in-hand—and it failed spectacularly. The tax cuts never materialized, prices didn’t decrease, and the Pound lost a ton of its value. Truss was out.
Her plan was to uproot the existing fiscal conventions, to dislocate the British financial landscape through radically bold and risky economic policy. She envisioned a new domestic world order.
Sound familiar? President Trump is trying to kindle a similar revolutionary spark. He wants a new world order too, and he’s going to use giant tariffs—or at least the threat of giant tariffs—to realize his ambition. Like Truss, he is wagering the future of his country’s financial footing on an experimental and radical strategy. Like Truss, he is leveraging a plan that is almost impossible to simulate. And like Truss, he is staking the country’s very reputation, at home and abroad, on this untested ante.
Americans can only hope that Trump’s tariff train hasn’t gone completely off the rails, as the tax one did for Ms. Truss. Because here’s the thing: The Brits’ system of government enjoys at least one massive guardrail that the U.S. system cannot duplicate: Their head of government, their party leader, their administrative public face, indeed their constitutional chief, can quickly be replaced.
Liz Truss could float a genuinely radical and potentially calamitous idea and, if it didn’t stick, she could be sacked. Pursue an idea that causes domestic and international panic and the shelf life of any British chancellor is short. Donald Trump can’t be sacked. His shelf life is fixed by the Constitution: Four years. That’s a long time, far longer than the five days it took to replace Truss with Rishi Sunak.
In my four decades as a faithful student of the U.S. Constitution, I never imagined that I would question the wisdom of the Framers’ decision to separate the branches. But then again, I never imagined a president who held such disdain for the very conventions and traditions—and the rule of law—that made the office of the president so dignified and reverential. I’m now questioning.
Our system of separation of powers—unlike the parliamentary system in Great Britain—allows the U.S. Congress to shrug at the incoherence of the White House. There is little at stake for the individual members of Congress when the President is issuing controversial executive orders and playing fast and loose with America’s standing in the world. Aside from impeachment and conviction—a toothless process more political now than anything else—Congress has no ability to fire a rogue president.
Not so in Great Britain. The Prime Minister is a member of Parliament, an elected legislative official, so if she is incoherent or too radical or too risky, she can simply be replaced by another member of parliament from the majority coalition party. Hence the lightspeed transition from Truss to Sunak. It’s not a pleasant situation, and it triggers a spate of hand-wringing in London and elsewhere. But it is relatively painless and frequently invoked.
Once again, America’s Constitution is showing its age. A governing charter written for a virtuous and noble George Washington has a hard time standing up to an egoistic and mercenary Donald Trump.
It’s time for constitutional change. A number of proposals have surfaced that get us a bit closer to the British model without sacrificing the principle of separate powers. How about a constitutional amendment that allows for a Congressional vote of no confidence in the President? Or one that offers a national recall election? The bar for each of these possibilities would have to be extraordinarily high so that neither is used as casual political fodder. We’re experiencing too much partisan grandstanding these days.
Or maybe we should rethink the 25th Amendment. Article IV permits the Vice President and a majority of the principal officers of the executive departments to replace the President if he is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” That is surely unlikely in this environment where those principal officers are hand-selected by the very leader they’re appraising.
No, I’m referring to the next clause of the 25th Amendment, the one that empowers Congress to appoint “[an]other body” to declare a President unfit. That “other body” could be an independent commission, a bipartisan conclave, or a representative sample of everyday citizens. It could be anyone. I could even imagine that it would be a good role for Article III judges on “senior status.” My point is that we might need that “other body.” Now and in the future.
If all this sounds strange, it probably is. Constitutional reform is always a bit out there. But before we completely dismiss the notion that Congress might invoke Article IV of the 25th amendment maybe we should ask ourselves if the proposal is any more bizarre than a process whereby a majority of legislators from the lower house can impeach a president but he isn’t convicted and removed from office, except by a vote of two-thirds of the upper house.
Make more sense? I’m not so sure.
Beau Breslin is the Joseph C. Palamountain Jr. Chair of Political Science at Skidmore College and author of “A Constitution for the Living: Imagining How Five Generations of Americans Would Rewrite the Nation’s Fundamental Law.”




















An Independent Voter's Perspective on Current Political Divides
In the column, "Is Donald Trump Right?", Fulcrum Executive Editor, Hugo Balta, wrote:
For millions of Americans, President Trump’s second term isn’t a threat to democracy—it’s the fulfillment of a promise they believe was long overdue.
Is Donald Trump right?
Should the presidency serve as a force for disruption or a safeguard of preservation?
Balta invited readers to share their thoughts at newsroom@fulcrum.us.
David Levine from Portland, Oregon, shared these thoughts...
I am an independent voter who voted for Kamala Harris in the last election.
I pay very close attention to the events going on, and I try and avoid taking other people's opinions as fact, so the following writing should be looked at with that in mind:
Is Trump right? On some things, absolutely.
As to DEI, there is a strong feeling that you cannot fight racism with more racism or sexism with more sexism. Standards have to be the same across the board, and the idea that only white people can be racist is one that I think a lot of us find delusional on its face. The question is not whether we want equality in the workplace, but whether these systems are the mechanism to achieve it, despite their claims to virtue, and many of us feel they are not.
I think if the Democrats want to take back immigration as an issue then every single illegal alien no matter how they are discovered needs to be processed and sanctuary cities need to end, every single illegal alien needs to be found at that point Democrats could argue for an amnesty for those who have shown they have been Good actors for a period of time but the dynamic of simply ignoring those who break the law by coming here illegally is I think a losing issue for the Democrats, they need to bend the knee and make a deal.
I think you have to quit calling the man Hitler or a fascist because an actual fascist would simply shoot the protesters, the journalists, and anyone else who challenges him. And while he definitely has authoritarian tendencies, the Democrats are overplaying their hand using those words, and it makes them look foolish.
Most of us understand that the tariffs are a game of economic chicken, and whether it is successful or not depends on who blinks before the midterms. Still, the Democrats' continuous attacks on the man make them look disloyal to the country, not to Trump.
Referring to any group of people as marginalized is to many of us the same as referring to them as lesser, and it seems racist and insulting.
We invite you to read the opinions of other Fulrum Readers:
Trump's Policies: A Threat to Farmers and American Values
The Trump Era: A Bitter Pill for American Renewal
Federal Hill's Warning: A Baltimorean's Reflection on Leadership
Also, check out "Is Donald Trump Right?" and consider accepting Hugo's invitation to share your thoughts at newsroom@fulcrum.us.
The Fulcrum will select a range of submissions to share with readers as part of our ongoing civic dialogue.
We offer this platform for discussion and debate.