U.S. Presidents and Vice-Presidents Are Never Immune From Danger – Political Or Otherwise.

Posted on | July 14, 2024 | 4 Comments

Mike Magee

This has been a disorienting period of mixed messages when it comes to the highest offices of the land. Just two weeks ago on July 1, 2024, a majority of the  Supreme Court decided to expand Presidential immunity for criminal malfeasance to former President Trump who had so severely tarnished the post on January 6, 2021. Twelve days later, Trump declared he knew nothing about Project 2025, a frontal assault on our Democracy that he has been encouraging for years.

The Supreme Court’s meddling occurred just three days after President Biden was forced to acknowledge that he had badly flubbed the First Presidential debate, which led to a series of recovery moves (the ABC Stephanopoulos interview on July 6; the live Press Conference in D.C. on July 11; and the full-energy “Don’t You Quit” rally in Detroit, Michigan on July 12) aimed at trying to prove he wasn’t too old or infirm to do the job.

In the meantime, Vice President Kamala Harris remained loyal and capable in the wings, while Trump went silent, cagily delaying his decision on his own running mate until he had greater clarity on who exactly he was running against. 

And then one day later, a 20-year old registered Republican, came within inches of successfully assassinating the former President with an automatic sniper rifle of the variety vigorously defended as just fine for civilian circulation by Republicans.

All of this might lead you to believe, when it comes to the top two positions in our Executive Branch of government, that we have entered unusual times. But, as history well illustrates, nothing could be farther from the truth.

In our brief history as a functioning Democracy, eight of our Presidents have died in office and one has resigned. Four sitting Presidents were killed by gunshot (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, JFK) and three have survived attempts on their lives (Reagan, Teddy Roosevelt, and now Donald Trump). As for their #2’s, seven VP’s have died in office and two have resigned in office. And that doesn’t even begin to cover the many cases where these top elected officials have managed to maintain their positions by hiding and covering-up a range of debilitating physical and mental illnesses while in office.

The Founding Fathers had little interest in insulating their top leaders from legal oversight. But after we declared our independence in 1776, it took another decade or so before the Constitutional Convention settled on a system of top leadership and succession. They had already established that the office of the Vice President would be created, and that the President and the Vice President would be elected by the Electoral College.  But ultimate power lay with the Congress. If they saw fit for any reason to remove both the President and the Vice President, and put somebody in his place until the next election, they had the power to do so.

It took 5 more years for the body to decide on a plan who would lead the country if both president and vice president were to become disabled or removed at the same time. They decided that the next top two people in the Federal Government who had actually been elected by the people would be the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives. That was the line of succession as of 1792.

This was the established law for another half century, until 1841, when William Henry Harrison died of typhoid.  He had only served for 31 days and, as it was laid out in the Constitution, the Vice President assumed his office, but the extent of his powers and the titling associated with his assumption of power were unclear. Was the Vice President just a substitute until the next election or was he actually now president? John Tyler pretty much resolved that question with a truly Trumpian move.  He contacted the first local judge he could find, and had himself sworn in as President, not as “Acting President.” This created a huge stir. John Quincy Adams went crazy over this issue, but a precedent had been set. From then on, if a President died, the Vice President became President.

Now, as we’ve seen, presidential and vice-presidential turnover is not uncommon. So this focus on succession is not a theoretical exercise. It’s a real issue for our representative democracy. And it is quite surprising in many ways that it’s been left as loose as it has been left in our Constitution. Crises like the one that involved John Tyler are how this issue has been queued up. Legislative solutions have largely been reactive. 

For example, in 1886, there was the assassination of James Garfield.  He was shot on July 2nd, 1881, but he lived for another 80 days, unable to function as President during that period of time. It is notable that over all of those 80 days, he never had a discussion with Chester Arthur, the vice president, about assuming the presidency or what would be the priorities. In fact, Chester Arthur was totally isolated, both by Garfield and by the people who serve Garfield.

Arthur did establish a committee to examine issues of succession, but they did little to correct the core problem of amassing so much power in a few individuals without adequate checks and balances. Now, it took only a few years more to expose that a President in power, supported by political allies and family, was powerful enough to skirt or ignore all the rules and boundaries Congress felt they had established. Case in point: Woodrow Wilson. But that is another story you can explore in greater depth HERE if it interests you.

So what have we learned in the past two weeks?

1. In our short American history, traumatic injury and loss of life have been a constant threat to our President and Vice-President in office.
2. Once in office, Presidents tend to minimize their mental and physical disabilities, and are aided in their conspiracies by family members and political loyalists and allies.
3. Peaceful transfer of power in the Executive branch has been recognized as “the weakest link” by the Founding Fathers who spent several decades attempting to manage this potential democracy-threatening liability.
4. The active debate within the Democratic party on their “final” 2024 ticket is consistent with other incumbent candidates who have struggled and managed to hold onto power with varying results.
5. Extending further protections from liability to the now wounded and newly heroic former President Trump, a convicted felony who openly declares his intent to extend the power of the Executive well beyond the fears of the original Founding Fathers, would suggest that this Supreme Court has, deliberately or mistakenly, wandered into new and uncharted territory.

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