HOW TO TELL A PRESIDENT eYOUfRE FIREDf
The 25th Amendment, a constitutional primer
By Jon Meacham
IDEAS PRESIDENT TRUMP
Could the 25th Amendment Be Trumpfs
Downfall? Herefs How It Works.
The 25th Amendment, a constitutional primer
He couldnft have put it more plainly. On
April 13, 1965, in the midst of a congressional debate over the proposed 25th
Amendment to the Constitution dealing with presidential succession and
incapacity, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Representative
Emanuel Celler of New York, dispensed with
high-minded legal arguments. They were there, Celler
said, to figure out what might be done if the unthinkable–a deranged American
President with nuclear weapons–became thinkable. gThe President may be as nutty
as a fruitcake,h Celler declared on the House floor.
gHe may be utterly insane.h And for this reason, America needed a plan.
Ratified two years later, the amendment
offered the country just that. And now, half a century on, the subject of
whether President Donald Trump could face a removal from power under its terms
is one of an ever widening conversation. gThe 25th Amendment is a concept that
is alive every day in the White House,h said Michael Wolff, author of Fire and
Fury: Inside the Trump White House, on NBCfs Meet the Press. White House
officials have strongly denied this–but, as ever, the President himself has
managed to keep the issue alive by tweeting about his mental stability.
Is the 25th Amendment chatter simply a
liberal fantasy? A #resistance fever dream? Political porn for wonks? Almost
certainly, but we live in a world in which the outlandish (a President Trump)
became a reality, so whofs to say where our political melodrama will end? Itfs
highly unlikely, but this unprecedented presidency could lead to unprecedented
constitutional ground: the invocation of the boring-sounding yet world-shaking
Section 4 of the 25th Amendment–a provision that enables the Vice President,
with a majority of members of the Cabinet, to declare the President unable to
discharge his duties, thus installing the Vice President as acting President
pending a presidential appeal to, and vote by, the Congress.
We know, we know: it all sounds overheated,
particularly when you consider that Vice President Mike Pence is one of Trumpfs
chief enablers and that the Cabinet officers all owe their place to Trump, whom
they would be voting to humiliate. And yet the mechanics are in place, and the
history of the question of presidential incapacity, and of the amendment
itself, shows that lawmakers at midcentury anticipated a President whose
instability might amount to disability. So why pass up a teachable moment to
explore remote constitutional hypotheticals?
Personal and abstract forces shaped the
debate over the capacity sections of the 25th Amendment. There were memories of
Woodrow Wilsonfs long convalescence from his October 1919 stroke; the evident
(if rarely acknowledged in real time) illness and wartime death of Franklin D.
Roosevelt; Dwight D. Eisenhowerfs heart attack in 1955 and stroke in f57; and
John F. Kennedyfs assassination in 1963. The advent of the Cold War, meanwhile,
had sharpened the question of a Presidentfs capacity to respond instantly to an
existential nuclear crisis.
The 25th Amendment has four sections, three
of which have to do with presidential succession and the filling of the vice
presidency in the event of a death or resignation. Section 3, under which a
President can temporarily transfer authority if he, for instance, undergoes
surgery, was invoked by Ronald Reagan in 1985 and by George W. Bush in 2002 and
f07. George H.W. Bush, who suffered from a thyroid condition, was ready to
invoke Section 3, giving Vice President Dan Quayle temporary power if he was
seriously felled by illness, but it never came to that.
Section 4 is where things really get
interesting. That provision, wrote John D. Feerick, a
legal scholar and a key architect of the amendment, gcovers the most difficult
cases of inability–when the President cannot or refuses to declare his own
inability.h The modern framers contemplated nightmare scenarios as they drafted
the amendment, including, Feerick recalled, gsituations
where the President might be kidnapped or captured, under an oxygen tent at the
time of enemy attack, or bereft of speech or sight.h One Section 4 scenario: an emergency medical situation during which
the President was unconscious or disabled for a period of time (a coma, for
instance). It was clear from the debates at the time of adoption and
ratification, according to Feerick, that gunpopularity, incompetence, impeachable conduct, poor judgment and
laziness do not constitute an einabilityf within the meaning of the amendment.h
The drafters took pains to make clear that
this was not an option to be taken in ordinary times. gWe are not getting into
a position,h Indiana Senator Birch Bayh, the amendmentfs chief author, said in
response to questions from Senator Robert Kennedy of New York, gin which, when
a President makes an unpopular decision, he would immediately be rendered
unable to perform the duties of his office.h The position they were getting
into was more apocalyptic. gIt is conceivable,h Bayh said, gthat a President
might be able to walk, for example, and thus, by the definition of some people,
might be physically able, but at the same time he might not possess the mental
capacity to make a decision and perform the powers and duties of his office.h
The most contentious issue, then, would be
psychological ability, not physical. And the context would likely be some kind
of standoff in which a President, in the overwhelming opinion of one elected
official (the Vice President) and of officials confirmed by the Senate (a
majority of the Cabinet), appeared unfit to execute his duties. There is also
language in the amendment that allows a majority of gsuch other body as
Congress may by law provideh–perhaps a panel of medical experts (or even
Congress itself)–to weigh in. In 1965, Representative
Richard H. Poff of Virginia said Section 4 was
designed to meet a moment gwhen the President, by reason of mental debility, is
unable or unwilling to make any rational decision, including particularly the
decision to stand aside.h
After his stroke early in his second term,
Eisenhower drafted an understanding with Vice President Richard Nixon that
authorized him to step in for a time if Eisenhower were incapacitated. There
was, however, a possibly fatal flaw in Ikefs plan: gThe President,h Eisenhower
wrote, gwould determine when the inability had ended and at that time would
resume the full exercise of the power and duties of the Office.h
But what if the incapacity had not, in
fact, been overcome? What if the President believed himself to be fit but was
not? This was the issue the drafters wrestled with in Section 4. Like
Eisenhowerfs informal plan, Section 3 handled situations like convalescence
from physical problems. The questions for Section 4 involved trickier scenarios
in which the President suffered, for instance, from some kind of mental-health
issue that he might not recognize but others around him did. gI admit this: if
a man were so deranged that he thought he was able, and the consensus was that
he [wasnft],h Eisenhower said, gthere would have to be something else done.h
Section 4 of the 25th Amendment was that
something else. In such a case, according to the amendment, the Vice President
and a majority of the Cabinet, or Congressfs gsuch other body,h could sign a
letter to the Speaker of the House (Paul Ryan) and the president pro tempore of
the Senate (Orrin Hatch) declaring the President unable to discharge the
office. If this happens, the Vice President becomes acting President. If the
President in question disagrees about his incapacity, he can, in writing,
immediately reassume office. In this constitutional tennis match, the Vice
President and the Cabinet majority then have four days to decide whether to
reassert the claim of incapacity. If they do so, the Vice President again
becomes acting President. Congress then takes up the issue, where a two-thirds
vote in each house, within 21 days, would be necessary to sustain the acting
President.
If the issue were allegations about a
Presidentfs mental health–the likeliest scenario–Congress could presumably
investigate, impaneling doctors and taking testimony. And therefs this wrinkle:
gWhile removal by impeachment is final, the President may appeal a declaration
of Section 4 inability an unlimited number of times,h Adam R.F. Gustafson wrote
in the Yale Law & Policy Review in 2009–in Trump terms, thus setting off a
seemingly endless season of The Apprentice meets Advise and Consent.
History doesnft offer us much to go on in
terms of Section 4. Although it was in effect during Watergate, those around
Nixon, worried about his darkness and his drinking, took informal steps. gI can
go into my office and pick up the telephone and in 25 minutes 70 million people
will be dead,h Nixon told visiting lawmakers during Watergate. Afterward,
California Senator Alan Cranston called Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger
about gthe need for keeping a berserk President from plunging us into a
holocaust.h In Nixonfs final days as President, Schlesinger instructed the
military to double-check attack orders from the White House with him, thus
unilaterally circumscribing the powers of the Commander in Chief.
The 25th Amendment was explicitly
researched in 1987 amid speculation that the 76-year-old Reagan, hobbled by the
Iran-contra affair, might be unable to carry on as President. The incoming
White House chief of staff, Howard Baker, asked an aide to explore the
constitutional options, but upon arriving for work, Baker realized that the
President was up to the job, and talk of the amendment faded.
Which is what will probably happen with the
current chatter about Trump. But in the nuclear age, there isnft much room for
error–and that means Pence and the Cabinet might want to brush up on their
constitutional history, for in the most dangerous of hours it could fall to
them to make some of their own.
This appears in the January 22, 2018 issue of TIME.