The Succession

Seeking to end 178 years of doubt and potential danger, Congress last week sent to the states a constitutional amendment aimed at making sure that the U.S. always has a President capable of performing his duties and a Vice President ready to replace him if it should become necessary.

The Senate voted 68 to 5* in favor of the House-approved amendment (see box), but not before some interesting questions were raised about its language. Particularly bothering some Senators was a provision that the Vice President and a majority of either the Cabinet "or of such other body as Congress may by law" establish could decide that the President was incapacitated, inform Congress of the disability, and have the Vice President take over as Acting President.

What, asked New York's Democratic Senator Robert Kennedy, if the President disagreed as to his incapacity? Could not the President fire his Cabinet and appoint a new and more subservient one to prevent his being replaced? "What we would end up with," Bobby suggested, "would be the spectacle of having two Presidents, both claiming the right to exercise the powers and duties of the presidency." Tennessee Democrat Albert Gore had another nightmarish notion. What if an ambitious Vice President were to ally himself with the Cabinet or the "other body"--in other words, "shop around for support of his view that the President is not able to discharge the duties of his office"? Said Gore: "Where there is a way, we must guard against the possibility of the will, and beware of the old adage that 'where there is a will there is a way.' "

To Republican Everett Dirksen, these were outlandish ideas. "I should not like to be around to enjoy the furor," said Dirksen, "if the Vice President undertook, for venal purposes or motivations of his own, to pursue that kind of course . . . The people of this country will have something to say about that. They would not exactly run him out on a rail, but his whole political future, such as it might be, would come to an end at that point." In the end, the amendment's critics failed to get any changes in the language agreed to by the House-Senate conference. The proposal now requires ratification by three-quarters, or 38, of the state legislatures before it becomes the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

*The five who voted against the resolution were Texas Republican John Tower, Ohio Democrat Frank Lausche, Tennessee's Gore, Minnesota Democrats Walter Mondale and Eugene McCarthy.

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