PRESIDENTIAL
SUCCESSION
CAN YOU PUT THEM IN THE RIGHT
ORDER?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Secretary of Treasury
Speaker of the House
Vice President
President pro tempore of the Senate
Secretary of State
CORRECT ORDER
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Vice President
Speaker of the House
President pro tempore of the Senate
Secretary of State
Secretary of Treasury
PRESIDENTIAL TRANSITION
• Eight presidents have died in
office.
• First was 1841
• John Tyler for William Henry
Harrison
• Should he be a caretaker or
assume the powers of office?
• Not counting tragedy within the
office, only 3 vice presidents
have been elected president
(outside Adams and Jefferson)
AH, THE VICE PRESIDENT
• This is not the best way to become president.
• Some expert opinions . . .
• “The second office of the governments is honorable and easy, the
first is but a splendid misery.” – Thomas Jefferson
• The vice presidency is “the most insignificant office that ever the
invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.” – John
Adams
• “I do not choose to be buried until I am really dead.” – Daniel
Webster, declining the offer to take the job
• The vice presidency is “not worth a pitcher of warm piss.” – Nance
Garner, FDR’s vice president
• Despite all this, men with power have given up their jobs
to become vice president (one Speaker, one Senate
majority leader, and 5 senators).
• Only official task is to preside over the Senate.
TROUBLES WITH SUCCESSION
• What happens if the president becomes ill?
• What happens if the vice president becomes president?
• The Twenty-fifth Amendment (1967):
• If president declares himself unable to serve, enter VP
• If the VP and a majority of the cabinet declares him unable to
serve, enter the VP (this can be challenged in Congress with 2/3
majority necessary to confirm president’s incapacity to serve)
• If VP becomes president, he can nominate a new VP with
congressional approval. (1974 – with Ford as president and
Rockefeller as VP, we get the first time the two chief executive
officers of the U.S. had not been elected by the people.)