To Remove Uncertainty

December 16, 1957

It may not seem important to many that the stock market drops violently whenever anything serious happens to the President’s health. But the stock market is our great business barometer. Its fall reflects the uncertainty that develops through the whole economy. And this, in turn, reflects wider uncertainty regarding our national ability to take instant and proper action in response to any internal or external threat. It is not doubt concerning the policies of the President’s successor that creates most anxiety, but the fear of governmental paralysis in a crisis.

Yet this uncertainty is entirely needless and easily removable. Let us look once more at the constitutional provisions regarding Presidential resignation and disability. Article II, Section 1 reads: “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, and the Congress may by law provide for the case of removal, death, resignation, or inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what officer shall then act as President, and such officer shall act accordingly, until the disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.” (My italics.)

CONGRESS HAS POWER

This provision is said to be vague concerning what or who determines Presidential “inability” if a President himself is unwilling or unable to do so. But it explicitly gives Congress power to decide all such details by legislation. If Congress, under this provision, explicitly authorized the President to transfer the powers and duties of his office temporarily, it is inconceivable that the Supreme Court would hold that Congress had acted beyond its constitutional powers.

The President’s right to resign at any time is constitutionally beyond doubt. Even here, however, clarifying legislation is desirable. If a President’s health is such as to force him to consider the grave step of resignation, he should not be confronted with the additional problem of financial sacrifice. Congress should provide that in the event of such forced resignation his salary would continue until the end of his term. Appropriate legislative provision also needs to be made concerning the salaries and expenses of both the President and Vice President during any period in which the latter temporarily assumed the powers and duties of the former.

TO DECIDE ‘DISABILITY’

Nor is this all that Congress should and could do by simple legislation. It has the clear power, under the constitutional provision just quoted, to say who should pass upon a President’s disability in the event that he himself is unable to do so. And clearly the only body that should be entrusted with the power of relieving the President of the duties of his office, even temporarily, is Congress itself. Congress, in fact, already has this constitutional power under the impeachment provision. Disability legislation could follow this precedent by providing for a President’s removal for disability by a majority vote in the House confirmed by a two-thirds vote in the Senate.

It is reassuring that the Eisenhower Administration itself is now pressing for speedy Congressional settlement of the problem. This matter is so urgent, in view of the repeated crises in President Eisenhower’s health and of the present perilous international situation, that it would justify calling a special session of Congress immediately if we were not so near to the regular session. Even now, important time could be saved if the appropriate Congressional committees could immediately frame enabling and clarifying legislation to be submitted to the full Congress as the first order of business.

As Arthur Krock has put it: “There is no real substitute in the American governing system for constant hour-by-hour Presidential leadership.” The first need is to enable a President to turn over the powers and duties of his office at least temporarily to the Vice President, and to enable him to do so with clear legal authority and an untroubled mind.

There are wider problems concerning the Presidential succession that might require constitutional amendment. But they can wait.