The 25th Amendment was added
to the Constitution after the assassination of John F. Kennedy and
provides for the replacement of the vice president if the office becomes
vacant. (So it led indirectly to the presidency of Ford, the
only American president who was never elected to any national office.)
But Section 4 is about something else entirely:
Whenever
the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of
the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law
provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the
Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that
the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his
office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and
duties of the office as Acting President.
A temporary transfer of power has happened a handful of times since
the Kennedy assassination, once when Reagan had cancer surgery
and twice when the shrub underwent colonoscopies. Most people have
thought of the 25th Amendment as a way to deal with a president who has
had a heart attack or a stroke and has become incapacitated, as Woodrow
Wilson did, with his wife effectively assuming the duties of the
presidency for the remainder of his term.
But the language of the amendment clearly encompasses other scenarios
besides physical incapacitation. This topic was a subject of
discussion toward
the end of the Reagan administration, when it became obvious that the
president was suffering a loss of cognitive ability. It wasn’t evoked
then but as we now know, Reagan was indeed suffering from the early
stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Had it become more acute or more obvious
while he was in office, Congress might well have had to take action as
laid out in the amendment.
Note that with the current composition of Congress, this is an action that could only be implemented by wingnuts. More at
Salon.
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