The problem is more long lasting. The world cannot accommodate 180 degree turns every 4 years in Washington.

So anybody that will follow, regardless of the person's policies won't matter fully, as that person itself will be replaced 4-8 years later.

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jjav 3 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> So anybody that will follow, regardless of the person's policies won't matter fully, as that person itself will be replaced 4-8 years later.

That is the fundamental problem. The only way out, is to make changes to the constitution to specifically prohibit the executive branch from having any of this power to arbitrarily change things on a whim. That is the only way international peer could in the future trust an agreement made with the USA.

As long as the US feels it is ok to sign an agreement and immediately violate it, nobody in their right mind will bother to negotiate any future agreements. Which is not a good state to be in.

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toast0 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

At least the timing of the turns is predictable... I imagine working with countries with snap elections is harder, especially when they have trouble forming a government.

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biorach an hour ago | parent | next [-]

You might think. The UK would be the most prominent example and in fact has been a much more predictable and consistent trading and negotiating partner than the USA

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philipallstar an hour ago | parent | next [-]

The UK hasn't really changed, regardless of who's in charge, in 20 years. Because it's mostly run by the state and not by the politicians.

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Symbiote an hour ago | parent | next [-]

In case you hadn't noticed, within the last 20 years the UK made an enormous constitutional change by leaving the EU.

	▲	classified 32 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		But no government has reversed that step.

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tyrabound 32 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

You didn’t say it and it may not occur to you, but you are correct, the UK is among the many sham democracies, which is arguably the primary objective of “democracies”; an illusion supported by a concept called choice supportive bias, i.e., if you believe the outcome of something was due to your own action, choice, or agency you’re prone to accept it, defend it, not question it, and ignore its detrimental effects.

It’s a rather diabolical form of control, democracy. “You have fake choices and you like … nay, you love what you choose”, quite literally. You have to love it, because you have to believe it’s true. And that’s where they latched onto your mind.

It’s quite ingeniou.

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mschuster91 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> The UK would be the most prominent example and in fact has been a much more predictable and consistent trading and negotiating partner than the USA

European here: Oh hell no. The Brexit breakup drama was years of chaos with each of the braindead Prime Ministers somehow managing to make things worse.

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Normal_gaussian an hour ago | parent | next [-]

That's quite a take.

The EU-UK negotiations were mired in issues of EU maximalism; attempting to force each PM to agree a worse deal knowing not agreeing to it would cause short term pain for that PMs political situation. Its quite the thing that the UK managed to hold on as much as it did.

The UK was on the back foot in all negotiations having been forced into the Brexit outcome.

For all the nonsense printed in the UK and Continental presses, the UK had a surprisingly consistent position through the entire thing with clear threads of staff and policies still running to today.

	▲	benj111 23 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		What? "Forced into the Brexit outcome" Cameron stepped down after he shat the bed, every PM was a Tory. And yeah, the position was consistent. Before it was 'we could have all the benefits of being in the EU, with none of the down sides'. We could have soft Brexit, or the less popular hard Brexit. Teresa Mays position was "Brexit means Brexit" and non of the others had a clue either. Because they promised everything to everyone. In the event we got a harder Brexit than the hardest Brexit discussed before the vote. So if you want to say the UK was consistent, I say fuck you to the civil servants that consistently ignored the conversation prior to the vote.

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benj111 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

It still is.

We still aren't doing border checks on EU imports.

Still, Boris Johnson wasn't as bad as Trump.

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epolanski an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

No, why would that be?

That's the reality of most mature democracies from UK to Germany to Italy.

If anything, that makes change slower and based on coalition consensus, not a single winner-take-all individual mood.

Which means that there isn't much to "work" as previous arrangements keep holding and they hardly change.

I would never exchange our democracy for a king electing one like in US, Turkey or Russia.

I'd rather have our democracies slower, the governments more unstable, but representative.

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mschuster91 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> So anybody that will follow, regardless of the person's policies won't matter fully, as that person itself will be replaced 4-8 years later.

There is only one chance the US has - they need to do what us Germans were forced to post-1945, rearchitect everything.

The US and UK are the only major countries that didn't undergo some sort of revolution, war or other reset of their constitution and legal systems and it shows everywhere.

If we Europeans (or anyone else) are supposed to ever trust the US again, we demand they properly fix their shit and prevent another madman's rise for good.

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ed_elliott_asc an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I fear this is just the beginning, I’ve seen nothing to say the voting American public are any less into divisive politics than they have been for the last decade

[edit autocorrect changed divisive to decisive]

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benj111 43 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

You do realise that Germany had a shiny new constitution, and then went on to elect that Austrian painter. And that's after the prior new and shiny constitution leading into ww1

Afghanistan had a new constitution and legal system when the US pulled out.

As a Brit, my take away is that having a nicely laid out constitution doesn't matter if you don't have the culture there to back it up. The US did manage to deal with one term of Trump, so that's something.

	▲	mschuster91 37 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> The US did manage to deal with one term of Trump, so that's something. Trump caused a lot of suffering and damage even in his first term, his second term (especially "thanks" to DOGE) was orders of magnitude worse. A good democracy can survive one direct hit, maybe two, but anyone with a working brain cell left can clearly see the cracks in the foundation one needs to exploit to become President - and there will be such exploitation attempts, unless by a huge wonder the next President will be a Democrat, have a majority in both chambers of Congress and prosecutes everyone involved in the Trump administrations.