The Contemporary Presidency: The Twenty Fifth Amendment: Recommendations and Deliberations of the Working Group on Presidential Disability
The Framers of the Constitution addressed the issues of presidential disability and succession in the document they wrote in Philadelphia in 1787 but they did so in ambiguous and uncertain language. Article II, section 5, states that "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." Two daunting problems emerged from this wording. First, it is not clear whether the words "the same" refer to the presidential office itself or to the powers and duties of the presidential office, an important distinction (Feerick 1992, 3). If the office passes to the vice president, he/she becomes president of the United States; if the powers and duties of the office are transferred, the vice president becomes acting president while the president continues to hold the office. Although the debates at the constitutional convention suggest strongly that the Framers preferred an acting presidency by the vice president rather than an actual succession to the presidential office (Ferrand 1911, 495), the Constitution itself neglects to make this clear. Further compounding the problem was that in 1841, after President William Henry Harrison became the first U.S. president to die in office, Vice President John Tyler's insistence that he had become president, and not simply acting president, of the United States, was accepted by Congress and the country. This created a powerful precedent supporting vice presidential succession to the office itself (Goldstein 1995, 522). The second problem arising from constitutional ambiguity is that the Framers unwisely placed together in the same sentence of the document three permanent and irreversible reasons for presidential separation from office (death, resignation, and removal) with one that is temporary and possibly even fleeting (inability). Because they failed to define "inability" or indicate how it might be determined, the constitutional configuration they adopted contributed to understandable reluctance by presidents to admit any inability to discharge the powers and duties of their office because they feared that if they did so, the result would be the same as if they permanently vacated it. The vice president would become president and they were uncertain whether they would be able to regain the office when their inability ended. Their reluctance was most unfortunate, because many presidents have suffered debilitating--although often well-concealed--illnesses while serving as the nation's chief executive. John Adams remained away from the capital for more than six months while trying to recover from the effects of probable hyperthyroidism (Ferling and Braverman 1998, 83). Madison suffered from a high fever and was delirious for almost a month, being described by some of his aides as deranged (Brandt 1961, 210). Jackson was afflicted with pulmonary hemorrhages, excruciating headaches, and shortness of breath. William Henry Harrison succumbed 30 days following his inauguration after developing viral pneumonia (Marx 1960, 113-14, 131). Cleveland underwent two concealed surgeries for cancer of the jaw while on board a yacht that traveled slowly up the Hudson River, procedures not disclosed until 1928, more than 30 years after he left the White House (Post and Robins 1992, 7-9). During the twentieth century, Woodrow Wilson suffered a massive stroke that paralyzed his left side and made his speech labored and indistinct, but the White House at first described his condition as a digestive upset (Smith 1964, 91). Harding suffered a heart attack while traveling from Vancouver to San Francisco but his White House physician publicly attributed his illness to crabmeat poisoning (Ferrell 1996, 15). …
The strange deaths of President Harding
Available for the first time in paperback, "The Strange Deaths of President Harding" challenges readers to reexamine Warren G. Harding's rightful place in American history. For nearly half a century, the twenty-ninth president of the United States has consistently finished last in polls ranking the presidents. After Harding's untimely death in 1923, a variety of attacks and unsubstantiated claims left the public with a tainted impression of him. In this meticulously researched scrutiny of the mystery surrounding Harding's death, Robert H. Ferrell, distinguished presidential historian, examines the claims against this unpopular president and uses new material to counter those accusations.At the time of Harding's death there was talk of his similarity, personally if not politically, to Abraham Lincoln. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes described Harding as one of nature's noblemen, truehearted and generous. But soon after Harding's death, his reputation began to spiral downward. Rumors circulated of the president's death by poison, either by his own hand or by that of his wife; allegations of an illegitimate daughter were made; and question were raised concerning the extent of Harding's knowledge of the Teapot Dome scandal and of irregularities in the Veterans' Bureau, as well as his tolerance of a corrupt attorney general who was an Ohio political fixer. Journalists and historians of the time added to his tarnished reputation by using sources that were easily available but not factually accurate.In "The Strange Deaths of President Harding, " Ferrell lays out the facts behind these allegations for the reader to ponder. Making the most of the recently opened papers of assistant White House physician Dr. Joel T. Boone, Ferrell shows that for years Harding suffered from high blood pressure, was under a great deal of stress, and overexerted himself; it was a heart attack that caused his death, not poison. There was no proof of an illegitimate child. And Harding did not know much about the scandals intensifying in the White House at the time of his death. In fact, these events were not as scandalous as they have since been made to seem.In this meticulously researched and eminently readable scrutiny of the mystery surrounding Harding's death, as well as the deathblows dealt his reputation by journalists, Ferrell asks for a reexamination of Harding's place in American history. "
Presidential Disability: Past Experiences and Future Implications
In 1967 Congress passed the Twenty-fifth Amendment to rectify an apparent inadequacy in the U. S. Constitution dealing with one of the gravest dangers to executive function–disability in the presidency. For 180 years, imprecise wording had bound the public welfare beneath a constitutional sword of Damocles which threatened to sever the legal discovery of inability in our Chief Executive from its occurrence. On at least four occasions during the last 100 years alone, executive function has been paralyzed by medically defined presidential inability, while two perplexing questions restricted a satisfactory resolution to the problem. First, in such a circumstance, does the office of the presidency devolve to the vice-president, or does the vicepresident merely serve as an acting president, assuming only its powers and duties? Second, who shall determine when the president is disabled and, its corollary, when that disability has ended? In the first instance, the amendment's sponsors ultimately determined that the vice-president assumes the powers and duties, but not the office itself, when the president becomes disabled. In the second, the sponsors proposed that the vice-president and the cabinet are jointly responsible for determining the duration of inability when, for medical or other reasons, the president is unable to do so.