[nabbed]

>Of course I would strongly prefer to not be a presidential system at all.

Having grown up in the US and having blinders on, I always thought all those parliamentary systems seemed unstable and sometimes comical. But now I see the value in it. Once a leader has demonstrated he is not up to the task, has grown out-of-touch, or has descended into madness, he can be replaced by his party, and if that didn't happen, a no-confidence vote could trigger an election. No guarantee either of those things would happen, but the option exists. The fixed four-year term idea now seems artificial and inflexible.

I suspect the current US leader and maybe even the previous US leader (maybe in his 4th year) would have suddenly found himself a back-bencher.

[rsynnott]

Also, the ‘leader’ in a parliamentary system is simply a lot less powerful. The executive is the cabinet, not the PM. The PM usually appoints it, but the ministers don’t get to fall back on ‘just following orders’; they are very much using their own authority. And again there’s always the threat of replacement of PM and re-alignment. Realistically, the threat is more important than the thing itself.

[acoustics]

I'm not sure if it's true that the leader is less powerful.

In many countries, it seems that the leader has near total control over candidate selection, and dissent is punished ruthlessly.

In the US, it's easier for a member of Congress to openly dissent against the President's agenda. This was a major thorn in the side for e.g. Joe Biden.

Some Republicans today fear dissenting (though of course, most are enthusiastically on board), but I'm not sure that it would be any different in a place like Canada or the UK.

[Marsymars]

> Having grown up in the US and having blinders on, I always thought all those parliamentary systems seemed unstable and sometimes comical.

There are so many different variables between countries, and plain luck, that it's tough to extrapolate too much, but this just jumped out a bit for me as a Canadian - the average Canadian PM term has historically been marginally longer than the average American Presidential time in office.