IF CHENEY GOES, WHO STEPS IN?

 Special to Crooks and Liars
Mark Groubert
10/19/05


Although the President and Vice President are the only
two elected positions voted on by all Americans to
hold office, George Bush will get to appoint a
replacement for Dick Cheney if the latter is forced to
resign. That "nomination" will have to be confirmed by
Congress. See below). I guess the Founding Fathers
didn't think of everything. They never in their
wildest dreams could have foreseen the coming of two
Republican scoundrels. One Richard M. Nixon, the other
George W. Bush.


During the devastating political scandals of the early
1970s, this section of the amendment was applied
twice. In 1973, after Vice-President Spiro Agnew
resigned, President Nixon nominated Rep. Gerald R.
Ford to succeed Agnew. After a careful investigation
by the Congress, Ford's nomination was approved.
Vice-President Ford, in turn, succeeded to the
presidency when Nixon resigned after being implicated
in the Watergate affair. Ford nominated Nelson A.
Rockefeller for vice-president, and the latter was
approved by the Congress.

The Constitution gives the Congress the responsibility
for providing for the order of succession to the
presidency should the offices of both president and
vice-president be vacant at the same time.

The succession statute was most recently rewritten in
1947, when Congress established the succession in this
order: the Speaker of the House of Representatives,
the president pro tempore of the Senate, and the heads
of the departments in the executive branch of the
federal government, in the order in which the
departments were created, beginning with the secretary
of state.

The succession has never passed below the
vice-president, although this would have occurred in
1974, when Nixon resigned, had not the 25th Amendment
provided for the filling of the vacancy created by
Agnew's resignation a year earlier.

Last update: 10/19/2005; 11:26:41 AM.