It's none of my beeswax really, but two things about being President have always struck me as odd - one, that you have to be born American and two, that you have a pre-determined number of terms in office. (I also find the whole President elect, and retaining the title after office, thing a bit odd, but then the President is Head of State, and doesn't take up office on the day of the election, the way they would over here, so I can see how those protocols evolved.)
We don't elect our Prime Ministers - we elect a Member of Parliament (MP), and whoever is the leader of the party with the most MPs gets to go to the palace where the Queen appoints them as her Prime Minister. (Theoretically, she could appoint anyone she chose, but after a bit of argy-bargy in the 19th century, we settled on a gentleman's agreement that she will go with the choice of the people.) That's how we can change PM without an election - the winning party just changes their leader, the old leader goes to the palace and offers their resignation, which the Queen accepts (although, again theoretically, she doesn't have to) and then she appoints the new leader as her new PM.
Technically, the new PM could be in power for as long as they lived, like Cromwell, but their party usually loses an election at some point, or their own team chucks them out.
I suppose, since you don't have to be a Brit to be the monarch, nobody thought about making it a stipulation for being a PM.
I expect all that sounds totally bonkers in America.
But it does seem a shame that, if they only want Americans as President, they can't change it to just being a citizen, so people like Arnie could run.
I know it wasn't always two terms, I don't know if it was always an American, but I suppose if you've just had a revolution that would make sense.
We don't elect our Prime Ministers - we elect a Member of Parliament (MP), and whoever is the leader of the party with the most MPs gets to go to the palace where the Queen appoints them as her Prime Minister. (Theoretically, she could appoint anyone she chose, but after a bit of argy-bargy in the 19th century, we settled on a gentleman's agreement that she will go with the choice of the people.) That's how we can change PM without an election - the winning party just changes their leader, the old leader goes to the palace and offers their resignation, which the Queen accepts (although, again theoretically, she doesn't have to) and then she appoints the new leader as her new PM.
Technically, the new PM could be in power for as long as they lived, like Cromwell, but their party usually loses an election at some point, or their own team chucks them out.
I suppose, since you don't have to be a Brit to be the monarch, nobody thought about making it a stipulation for being a PM.
I expect all that sounds totally bonkers in America.
But it does seem a shame that, if they only want Americans as President, they can't change it to just being a citizen, so people like Arnie could run.
I know it wasn't always two terms, I don't know if it was always an American, but I suppose if you've just had a revolution that would make sense.
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