As calls grow for President Donald Trump's removal from office through impeachment or the 25th Amendment, a prominent conservative has argued that only one amendment can save the U.S. from its "embarrassing and terrifying" commander-in-chief: the 22nd.

Yuval Levin, director of constitutional studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, made the case in the National Review on Thursday, explaining not only why the 22nd Amendment is the country's only realistic chance of getting rid of Trump "soon," but also that new protections should be established to guard against "presidential excess" in the future. Levin, a former congressional staffer who has written extensively on American institutions and the presidency, has been a frequent critic of Trump from within the conservative movement, making his argument a notable data point in intramural right-of-center debates about the president.

Levin notes that there has been a "growing chorus of voices…pointing to President Trump's frankly unhinged tweets and saying this is what the 25th Amendment to the Constitution is for." While Levin specifies that these calls are coming from the left, there have also been plenty of examples from the right. Former Trump allies such as Alex Jones and Marjorie Taylor Greene have questioned the president's mental health and argued for invoking the 25th Amendment since the early days of the war on Iran, suggesting that his threats to destroy an entire civilization disqualified him from office.

"They certainly aren't wrong about the tweets," Levin concedes. "Trump's online rants are glimpses of a deeply deformed psyche, and the fact that its bearer is the president of the United States is obviously both embarrassing and terrifying. And yet, even though they're right about the president's character and behavior, the chorus of situational constitutionalists calling for Trump's removal are nonetheless barking up the wrong tree now."

Levin explains that although the 25th Amendment provides several mechanisms for replacing a president, they are ultimately available only if the president is medically incapacitated or voted unfit for office by the cabinet. The amendment, ratified in 1967 in the aftermath of John F. Kennedy's assassination, has never been used to remove a president involuntarily; its Section 4 process has never once been invoked in practice. In the latter case, "keeping the vice president in power as acting president over the president's objection would require two-thirds votes in both houses — or in other words, a higher threshold in Congress than impeachment and removal, which requires a simple majority in the House and two-thirds only in the Senate." In short, if there is not a sufficient majority in Congress to impeach and remove the president, he also cannot be removed under the 25th Amendment. A president capable of objecting to being sidelined under the 25th Amendment can return to power, and whatever might be said about Trump's assorted deficiencies, Levin writes, "he is certainly more than capable of making such an objection."

Impeachment remains technically an option if the votes exist in Congress, but according to Levin, "there isn't a sufficient number now, and there almost certainly isn't going to be."

"So those yearning for a post-Trump era are left instead to resort to another constitutional amendment," Levin writes. "One passed with something much more like our situation in mind and steeped in a realism about the danger of executive power unmatched by any other element of the Constitution. The 22nd Amendment, ratified in the wake of Franklin Roosevelt's shattering of the norm of two-term presidencies, restored that norm as a formal constitutional constraint. It expresses the recognition that sometimes presidents might persuade the voting public to do foolish things, and that it is vital that it be made easier to wait out such presidents and set a clear limit on their time in office."

The amendment, ratified in 1951 after Roosevelt won four presidential elections, limits presidents to two terms — and because Trump is serving his second term, it bars him from running again in 2028 unless the Constitution itself were amended, a process requiring two-thirds of both houses of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of the states.

Levin adds a warning: "Trump has talked about ignoring the 22nd Amendment, and we should put nothing past him. But it does seem likely that the amendment will help rid us of him soon, and leave us once again thanking a prior generation for creating an institutional protection against our weaknesses."

He concludes with advice on what should be done once Trump leaves office: "As we thank those prior generations, we should also follow their example. Without expecting anyone to openly disclaim or even privately regret their part in empowering Donald Trump, we should look for potentially bipartisan ways to apply some of the lessons we are learning now, and to build some protections against presidential excess in the future tense that we have lacked in the present tense."