Gixing Fovernment - President Pro ELDERLY

The office of the President Pro Temp or Pro Tempore has been around since the beginning. Essentially the vice president, or deputy, to the President of the Senate, aka the Vice President of the United States.

The President Pro Temp, or PPT, is even part of the presidential line of succession. It's switched positions many times with the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Cabinet Secretaries, but since 1947 it has remained 3rd in line behind the VPOTUS and the Speaker and just before the Secretary of State.

Starting in 1890 the Senate started electing the senior senator of the majority party to the office and since 1949 has stuck to that tradition. It's a strange tradition to reenforce when the presidential line of succession was just rewritten two years prior and it was the early years of the Cold War. It would take an assassination and a vacancy in the vice presidency where a Constitutional Amendment would be needed and so came the 25th Amendment in 1967. One of the four sections of the Amendment state that the president must appoint a vice president if the office were vacant. The line of succession during the height of the Cold War in the 1960s was something of importance in maintaining the continuity of government.

The United States faced similar situations 2002 when the government was reorganized again with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. However while the line of succession was always considered during the early years of the "War on Terror", the Senate didn't break with tradition when it came to electing their leadership and thus third person in line for the presidency was an old man who's age was showing.

Yes, the line of succession has never gone beyond the vice president but since it is there it should be taken seriously. The President Pro Tempore should become the Senate's power equivalent to that of the Speaker. (And yes, the Speaker is equal to the President of the Senate as leaders of the 2 houses). The PPT should earn the pay check and have more of a role...even though they already don't do anything. The VPOTUS and the PPT hardly ever preside over Senate session. That's what freshmen are for...at any institution. The Senate leadership of President Pro Temp, Majority Leader and Majority Whip (aka Assistant Majority Leader) should mirror the leadership of the House with the Speaker, Majority Leader and so on.

The current PPT is Patrick Leahy of Vermont and at 73 years old doesn't look his age like his most recent predecessors like Daniel Inouye of HI, Robert Byrd of WV, Ted Stevens of AK, and Strom Thurmond of SC. Now some perspective, when Senator Byrd took the office of PPT for the first time in 1989 he was 72 and as the power shifted back-and-forth between Republicans and Democrats so did the occupant of the Office of the President Pro Tempore, so by 2010 (the year Byrd passed away) he was 93 years old when he last held the office. As our recent PPT have shown, humans are living longer and without term limits (not that GIXING FOVERNMENT is going to to mention term limits as something that will remedy the system...but it will be touched on), Senator Leahy will be the PPT each time the Democrats are in power. If Leahy continues to serve, then 20 years later (2034), we'll see an older version of Leahy as the PPT.

If a man looked as old as any of Leahy's most recent predecessors, no American would vote for him (or her). Age at some point becomes a factor in the consideration for the presidency. So far, Ronald Reagan is the oldest POTUS at 69. For 8 years he served and we did not question his ability to serve, even though 5 years after leaving office he revealed he had Alzheimer's. Vice President Alben Barkley was advised not to run for president in 1952 because, at 74, his age would be a factor. In 2014, 74 doesn't look the same to Americans as it did in the mid-20th Century. Currently, the average age of a POTUS is 54 years old, or rounding up, 55. So, the age of the occupant of the Office of the President Pro Temp should be reasonable and not seem like they are challenging the limits of humanity.

While this smacks of ageism, we already Constitutionally limit the office holder of the presidency to 35 and above, as well as being a native born citizen. Those younger than 35 are deemed unqualified for the office. If there is a non-native born member of the Cabinet, they would be skipped in the line of succession because they don't meet the qualifications for the office. A Constitutional Amendment is not needed for limiting the age of the PPT, but rather the Senate simply reverting to the pre-1890 practices of simply voting for the officer. If the Senate treats the selection of the PPT like that of the Speaker, then the result will more than likely be a politician in their political prime...and yes that might be an aging person but not likely. So let's stop giving a line of succession job to longest serving member of a party, just create a special office for that person and leave the Constitutional office to those that could serve all Americans if need be.

Today in POTUStory

Finally after 178 years under our current Constitution these words were written into the great document:

In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.

And that was just the start.

Before 1967 the Constitution never specified what exactly would happen if something happened to the president of the United States. For the first time on April 4, 1841, a president passed away. The nation's 9th chief magistrate, William Henry Harrison gave the longest inaugural address in the depths of winter on March 4th of that year. The oldest man elected to the office to that point (Ronald Reagan would later hold that title) decided to give his long address without a top hat or overcoat. The 68 year old president died 30 days (or 32?) later of pneumonia.

William Henry Harrison, 9th President of the United States

Hay dios mio! What do we do?

The 10th vice president of the United States, John Tyler, found out the next day that President Harrison had passed away. The Constitution said:

In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the same shall devolve on the Vice President

What did devolve mean? It was unclear and the Founding Fathers made it unclear intentionally or unintentionally. But Vice President Tyler took it to mean that he would become the president of the United States.

John Tyler, 10th Vice President of the United States and 10th President of the United States

On April 6th he took the oath of office and the reigns of power. The cabinet, which Harrison appointed, tried to deny Tyler the authority of the presidency. Tyler made it clear to them and his detractors in the Congress that he was the president of the United States, not Acting-President or the Vice President in the role of the presidency until some kind of special election.

The 10th vice president went on to become the 10th president.

Vice President Tyler being informed of the death of President Harrison

The Tyler Precedent would be followed by Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman, and Lyndon Johnson. The Tyler Precedent would go on to be written into the Constitution as the 25th Amendment. Gerald Ford would be the first to be elevated thanks to the 25th Amendment. Ford would also be the first to be appointed vice president due to a vacancy.


House Minority Leader Gerald Ford being sworn in as the 40th Vice President of the United States

The 25th Amendment would also make sure that there would never be a vacancy in the vice presidency. Whenever the vice presidents succeeded to the presidency, died in office, or resigned leaving the vice presidency vacant it would remain so until the next election and then inauguration.

The acknowledgment that the vice president becomes the president is the first thing mentioned in the 25th Amendment and has taken effect only by Gerald Ford's ascendancy. Filling the vacancy is the second part of the Amendment which has only occurred twice, Ford replacing Spiro Agnew after his resignation in 1973 and Nelson Rockefeller's appointment once Ford succeeded President Nixon in 1974. The third section of the Amendment allows the president to inform the President Pro Tempore and the Speaker of the House that he or she cannot perform the duties of the office and transmit the powers to the Vice President to perform them as Acting President and can reclaim the powers once he or she informs the two leaders of the Congress. Ronald Reagan did this in 1985, making Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush the first Acting-Presidnet. While Dick Cheney held the title twice during the George W. Bush administration once in 2002 and then again in 2007.

The final section of the 25th Amendment has never taken place. George H. W. Bush calls the fourth section a legal coup. The vice president and a majority of the cabinet officers are needed to declare the president unable to execute the duties of the office. The closest we've come to this is in the feature film Air Force One when the vice president played by Glenn Close is presented with a letter readied for her to sign initiating the Acting President status under the fourth section of the 25th Amendment. She tears it up at the end of the film once the president is safe from the Russian terrorists and no longer in danger.


Air Force One movie poster

It took the threat of a nuclear age for the line of succession of vice president to president to be clearly written into the Constitution. After the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, the vice presidency remained vacant. Where as before then no evil or dangerous threat really harmed or threatened the country as succession slowly took its time. But in the post-Cuban Missile Crisis United States immediate succession took precedent.