Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but the story of the 25th Amendment is rather a curious one. Curious, that is, in terms of the essential character of the amendment itself and the circumstances which gave rise to the same. It concerns itself, of course, with presidential succession, a topic which would seem to be of paramount importance to the proper functioning of the United States government. After all, what manner of crisis might emerge if a sitting president – an individual arguably possessed of unparalleled power in the world – were to die in office without a clear line of succession in place? But the 25th Amendment was not proposed in response to any such crisis. Granted, at the time of its approval by Congress in the summer of 1965, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) was less than two years in the past. And it would, quite simply, be a lie to attempt to claim that this same tragic event had no influence over the lawmakers involved. But it would also be patently false to assert that an uncertain line of succession had very much to do with Kennedy’s murder rising to the level of a national crisis. On JFK’s death on November 22nd, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, Vice-President Lyndon Johnson (1908-1973) simply became the 36th President. The same thing had happened to Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) on the death of William McKinley (1843-1901). The same thing had happened to Chester A. Arthur (1829-1886) on the death of James Garfield (1831-1881). Indeed, as far back as the 1840s, it was accepted as fact that Vice-Presidents were effectively heirs to the presidential throne. Upon the death of a president, that is, the vice-president assumed their office. So why, then, with such a sturdy principle in place, was there any need for an amendment to confirm what everyone already knew? And why was just such an amendment proposed by Congress specifically in 1965?
The thing about rules of succession, of
course, is that they’re not important until they are. From one day to the next,
it doesn’t really matter who is next in line to the presidency. And if all
things go to plan, it never will matter more than in theory. Because
presidents, unlike kings, are not supposed to die in office. So it isn’t until
something unexpected happens that the idea of succession becomes important. And
once the unexpected has been dealt with, it becomes unimportant once again.
Such was the story of the presidential line of succession from the drafting of
the Constitution until the ratification of the 25th Amendment in
1967. Now, in fairness, the actual text of the Constitution as concerns the
relationship between the offices of President and Vice-President does leave a
bit too much room for interpretation than is particularly desirable. “In Case
of the Removal of the President from Office,” it states, “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 [.]” There would seem to be at
least two fairly significant questions which neither this statement nor any
other section of the Constitution really answers. The first is, who decides, or
by what metric is it decided, whether a sitting President has become unable to
discharge the duties of their office? And the second is, what, precisely, in
meant by the phrase “shall devolve” in the relevant clause? If, by way of
death, resignation, or inability, an individual can no longer fulfil the
responsibilities of the office of President, does their Vice-President simply
accede to said office as a matter of course? Or do they merely take on the
powers and responsibilities of the same while technically remaining Vice-President?
John Tyler (1790-1862), of all people, at
least provided an answer to the latter query. Now arguably among the least
well-known occupants of the White House, Tyler made at least one significant
contribution to the history of his country. That is, after breaking with the
Democrats during the Nullification Crisis (1832-1833), becoming the Whig
nominee for Vice-President in 1840, and witnessing the death of his running
mate William Henry Harrison (1773-1841) after the latter emerged victorious, he
made the crucial decision to take the oath of office as President and
immediately assume said office in the spring of 1841. Granted, the decision
cannot be said to have been met with universal acclaim. Many Whigs in Congress
– chief among them John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) and Henry Clay (1777-1852) –
maintained that Tyler was only the “acting president” and that his
administration was effectively a regency for that of the deceased Harrison. But
Tyler remained steadfast in his conviction that he was the President
both formally and practically – going so far as to refuse to open
correspondence that continued to address him as “Vice-President” – and in time,
both houses of Congress officially affirmed him as such. And so it was that,
from 1841 forward, Vice-Presidents who succeeded to the office of President
upon the sudden vacancy of the latter did so totally and completely
without any reference being made to their being either “acting” or “interim.”
This precedent was next affirmed in 1850 when the sudden death of Whig
President Zachary Taylor (1784-1850) led to the immediate elevation of his
Vice-President, Millard Filmore (1800-1874), and then again in 1865, 1881,
1901, 1923, 1945, and 1963.
But while the “Tyler Precedent” effectively
established the principle that the entire office of President, rather than just
its attendant powers and responsibilities, devolved upon the sitting
Vice-President upon the sudden and permanent absence of a chief executive,
there still remained the question of presidential “inability.” That is to say,
it remained unclear, under the terms of the Constitution, precisely what could
be said to render a sitting President unable to perform the duties of their
office and exactly who, in the moment, was supposed to make this determination.
Was the President expected to hold themself to account or was some other party
supposed to decide if they were still fit for office? The whole thing,
functionally speaking, was more than a little ambiguous, and also more than a
little vulnerable to bad-faith manipulation. Granted, when Grover Cleveland
(1837-1908) declined to inform the nation when he underwent cancer surgery in
July of 1893, it was not necessarily with malicious intent. With the United
States in the midst of what would prove to be a fairly severe economic crisis –
i.e., the Panic of 1893 – Cleveland was of the opinion that a public admission
of his own cancer diagnosis would only plunge the country deeper into financial
ruin. To that end, he had the surgery in question conducted aboard a yacht off
the coast of Long Island and arranged it such as to give himself ample time to
recover before the next session of Congress. If Cleveland had died under
anaesthesia, of course, the damage would doubtless have been far greater than
if he had simply admitted to his illness. And because the surgery was kept a
secret, it is also not entirely clear who, during the relevant period in July
of 1893, held the powers of the office of President, the unconscious and then
recovering Cleveland or his Vice-President, Adelai Stevenson I (1835-1914).
Still, though his reasoning was somewhat questionable, one can at least credit
Cleveland with not trying to exploit an ambiguity of the Constitution for the
purpose of personal gain. The same could not be said for the next Democrat to
occupy the White House.
In October of 1919, less than one year
after the ending of hostilities in WWI and with the concluding Treaty of
Versailles still yet to be ratified by Congress, President Woodrow Wilson
(1856-1924) suffered a severe stroke. This, in itself, was not all that
surprising. He had suffered a previous – albeit comparatively mild – stroke in
1906 during his tenure as President of Princeton University, and he was
subsequently diagnosed with atherosclerosis, a persistent narrowing of the
arteries that can lead to a number of series health conditions. What was
surprising, however, was how President Wilson chose to respond. Rather than
disclose his condition to the American public, request that the Vice-President
take over his responsibilities, or resign from office in order to focus on his
recovery, Wilson opted to keep the knowledge of his stroke a secret from all
but a handful of people. Aside from his physician, Dr Cary Grayson (1878-1938),
and his wife, the former Edith Galt (1872-1961), Wilson was seen by no one for
weeks on end. In that time, Edith, in effect, became the “manager” of the
presidency, deciding of her own volition which matters of state were too
important to be handled by anyone other than the president and which could be
delegated to some other member of the administration. In cooperation with
Wilson’s private secretary, Joseph Tumulty (1879-1954) and journalist Louis
Seibold (1863-1945), she even went so far as to plant a fabricated interview in
the New York World in June of 1920, the purpose of which was to make the
still-recovering president appear fully present and alert. But while, by as
early as February of 1920, news of Wilson’s condition had begun to leak out of
the White House, no one in a position to legitimately question the president’s
fitness for office seemed at all willing to do so.
Vice-President Thomas Marshall (1854-1925),
for example, notably took no action. Granted, the text of the Constitution did
not explicitly authorize him to do so, but it was unlikely that very many
people would have claimed he was acting out of turn if he publicly asked Wilson
to consider resignation. Congress, on the other hand, was authorized to
act, specifically by the text of Article II, Section 1, Clause 6. In the event,
it said, of presidential removal, death, resignation, or inability,
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.
It had never done
so before, of course. In all previous cases of the death of a sitting president
– as of the middle 1960s, the only means by which the office of chief executive
had ever been rendered vacant – the sitting vice-president had simply assumed
the superior office. Congress had never been required to step in, doubtless
thanks in large part to the relative simplicity of the situation. That is to
say, with a vice-president already waiting in the wings, what more really
needed to be done besides affirm the new commander-in-chief? But the notion of
presidential “inability” presented a much thornier proposition than did the
death of a sitting chief executive.
Nowhere did the Constitution specify
how it was that Congress was supposed to determine the “inability” of a sitting
president to continue to serve in office. Was it supposed to rely upon the
testimony of those closest to the individual in question? The various members
of the cabinet, say? Or the vice-president? Or their personal secretary? Or was
it necessary that some kind of expert – most likely a medical doctor – conduct
an examination and present their findings? And what if the president refused to
be examined? Did Congress have the authority to force the president to submit
to a physical? Article II, Section 1 could not answer any of these questions.
Nor did the text thereof at all indicate that the Framers ever envisioned any
of the relevant parties attempting to abuse their delineated powers. Clearly –
in light of the various unanswered questions enumerated above – a president who
might otherwise qualify as being unable to discharge the responsibilities of
their office could nonetheless hold on to power by taking advantage of the
poorly-defined nature of Congress’s authority under Article II. But Congress
could also conceivably exploit those same powers in an attempt to remove a
sitting president with whom its members found themselves at odds. Conflict, in
such cases, was almost certainly inevitable, and the Supreme Court would almost
certainly be called upon to settle the resulting dispute. But while the Court
certainly had the authority to make a binding ruling under such circumstances,
there was no telling how much damage might be done in the meantime both to the
credibility of an American government seemingly at war with itself and
potentially to the lives and livelihoods of those who supported either the
sitting president or Congress.
There was also – albeit somewhat
further down the list of priorities – the matter of the vice-president.
Specifically, there remained no constitutionally delineated way to replace a
vice-president who, for whatever reason, had been removed from office. And in
consequence of this evident lack of forethought on the part of the Framers,
several periods had transpired in the history of the United States up to the
middle 1960s wherein the sitting president had no popularly elected heir
apparent. In fact, on sixteen separate occasions, the office of vice-president
sat vacant, in some cases for as little as fifty days and in others for as long
as nearly four whole years. In seven of these cases, the sitting vice-president
had died in office. In one, the sitting vice-president had resigned. And in a
rather shocking eight cases, the sitting vice-president had acceded to the
office of president. Now, granting that the absence of a vice-president on all
of these occasions did not present very many practical problems – inasmuch as
the vice-president has a relatively short list of constitutional
responsibilities – it does serve, in retrospect, to highlight the rather
distressing instability of the presidential line of succession. Because while
the status of the vice-president as heir to the president is explicitly defined
in the Constitution, Congress is solely responsible for determining who comes
next.
On three separate occasions, Congress has
passed legislation for the purpose of determining which of the officers of the
Government of the United States followed the vice-president in the presidential
line of succession and in what specific order they fell. And taken together,
these three acts of law would seem to make clear that the American political
class has often disagreed – and often disagreed significantly – as to
what constituted a proper safeguard in the event of sudden vacancies in the
Executive Branch. The Presidential Succession Act of 1792, approved less than
five years after the adoption of the Constitution, simply noted that the
vice-president would be followed in the line of succession by the president pro
tempore of the Senate and then the Speaker of the House. It also included a
rather complicated set of directions for holding special elections for
president and vice-president in the event of the sudden vacancy of both of
those offices, but this is not so relevant to the discussion at hand. What
matters is that, even despite the relative simplicity of the 1792 act’s
solution to the problem of presidential succession, the process by which this
solution was arrived at was positively fraught with controversy. The 2nd
Congress had pro-administration – i.e., proto-Federalist – majorities in both
chambers, and it stood to reason that the supporters of a strong, centralized
federal government wanted the presidency to devolve upon one of their own in
the event of a catastrophe that left the country ostensibly leaderless.
It was for this same reason that the
potential inclusion of the Secretary of State in the order of succession was
eventually shot down. It wasn’t that the office was an appointed one and
therefore unfit to succeed to what was supposed to be the only elected office
in the land with a nation-wide constituency. Rather, it was because the sitting
Secretary of State was none other than Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), leader of
the nation’s anti-administration faction. And so, though it remained
substantially unlikely that something would occur to remove enough people ahead
of him to lead to his elevation to the office of president, the fact that the
proto-federalists in Congress disliked Thomas Jefferson’s politics was in no
small part the reason that the 1792 Act of Succession had no role in mind at
all for one of the most powerful offices in the contemporary United States
Government. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was also apparently
considered for inclusion in the line of succession, though this idea was discarded
for a somewhat more sensible reason. Specifically, the members of the 2nd
Congress found it too difficult to decide precisely what would become of the
Chief Justice upon their elevation to the office of president. Would they
resign their seat on the Court while serving as Acting President? And if they
did, who would take their place on the Court? And if they didn’t, would
this not constitute a violation of the separation of powers? Important as the
office of Chief Justice was – being the head of one of the three branches of
the Government of the United States – the logistics of potentially uniting that
office with that of the president were simply too messy to contemplate.
Compared to its immediate predecessor –
which was shaped as much by theory and ideology as any practical considerations
– the Presidential Succession Act of 1886 was a direct response to a series of
specific events which, between them, showed up the inadequacies of established
presidential succession law. The first occurred in September of 1881 upon the
death – caused by a gunshot wound sustained two months earlier – of the
aforementioned President James A. Garfield. As per the cited terms of Article
II, Vice-President Chester A. Arthur immediately succeeded to the presidency,
thereby ensuring that the executive branch was not left leaderless. But with
Arthur taking his predecessor’s place in the White House, the office of
Vice-President was subsequently left vacant at a time when, owing to the
vicissitudes of contemporary legislative scheduling, there was neither a
president pro tempore of the Senate or a speaker of the House of
Representatives yet in place. What this meant, practically speaking, was that
the sudden death of President Arthur – however likely or unlikely such an event
might have been – would have left literally no one in charge of the Executive
Branch. As mentioned previously, the Succession Act of 1792 did provide
instructions for conducting a special election in the event of the double
vacancy of the offices of president and vice-president. But in the meantime, it
depended on there being either a speaker or a Senate pro tem to take up the
reigns of the presidency. And while it was true that the House did elect
a speaker soon enough after Garfield’s death – in the form of Ohio Republican
J. Warren Keifer (1836-1932) – it nevertheless remained a cause for concern
among interested parties that the United States had just come dangerously close
to being thrust into a situation to which neither the law nor the Constitution
seemed to offer any solution.
This sense of concern was further magnified
a scant four years later upon the sudden and unexpected death of Vice-President
Thomas A. Hendricks (1819-1885). On its own, of course, Hendrick’s death did
little to unsettle the basic power structure of the United States Government.
President Cleveland remained in the White House and the Senate continued
transacting its business notwithstanding the loss of its presiding officer. If
something were then to have happened to Cleveland, however – a secret cancer
surgery gone wrong, for example – this would have left the country in a more
than usually undesirable position. Absent a vice-president, the sudden death or
incapacity of Grover Cleveland would have theoretically led to the elevation of
the president pro tem of the Senate or else to the elevation of the speaker of
the House of Representatives. But as it happened, there was neither a pro tem
nor a speaker in office in November of 1885. Congress was not scheduled to meet
until December of that year, at which point the upper and lower houses would
duly elect their presiding officers. And while this, indeed, is precisely what
happened, there remained a period of several weeks during which the
aforementioned President Cleveland was essentially working without a net.
Was it particularly likely that something
might have occurred to remove Cleveland from office during this specific period
of time? Not particularly. That is, not as far as history records. But it would
seem to bear remembering that the full details of Cleveland’s cancer surgery
were not revealed to the American public until one of the doctors who was
present published an article on the subject in 1917, twenty years after
Cleveland left office in 1897 and almost a decade after his death in 1908. So
clearly, then, Grover Cleveland was at least somewhat comfortable keeping
secrets about his health from the American people. Secrets which, as far as he
was concerned, would go with him to his grave. Bearing this in mind, it would
not seem to constitute the most outrageous hypothetical to imagine President
Cleveland holding some other important detail about his health closer to his
vest than was altogether proper. And what if this particular detail concerned a
life-threatening condition? And what if, instead of successfully treating said
condition, Cleveland succumbed to it, suddenly, in late November of 1885? It
would have amounted to a race, would it not? A race between the Senate and the
House to see which of them could elect a presiding officer first. The Senate,
at that time, had a Republican majority. And the House, at that time, had a
Democratic majority. So the death of Cleveland, in effect, would have triggered
a partisan battle for control of the presidency.
And what if the members of the two chambers
found themselves unable to come to a decision? This would have been unlikely in
the House – the aforementioned Democratic majority was a fairly sizable one –
but it could easily have happened in the Senate if a few Republican senators
began to waver. And what then? If the Senate failed to elect a president pro
tem in time, the House majority would have been able to effectively hand pick
the next commander-in-chief. And while the Democrats in the lower chamber would
doubtless have argued this was only fitting and proper – Cleveland having been
a Democrat himself – the Republicans in the Senate would surely have cried foul
by pointing to the terms of the aforementioned succession act. The pro tem came
ahead of the speaker in the event of a double vacancy at the head of the
executive branch. The House, therefore, might have been declared guilty by the
Senate of having stolen the powers of the presidency in contravention to the
law of the land. One can only imagine, with mounting horror, the crisis that
would then have more than likely unfolded. It would have been a mess, in short;
a horrible, deeply partisan mess. And one which could easily be avoided if the
presidential line of succession was made just a little more…lengthy.
This was seemingly the thought process
behind the authorship and subsequent passage of the Presidential Succession Act
of 1886. The same draft text had been put forward some three years prior by
Massachusetts Senator George Frisbie Hoar (1826-1904), specifically in response
to the aforementioned situation created by the death of President Garfield.
With the United States having come alarmingly close to invoking the terms of
the Succession Act of 1792, Hoar chose this moment to express his opinion that
this self-same piece of legislation was fundamentally inadequate to the task it
had been designed to perform. For one thing, he asserted, the holding of a
special election in accordance with the terms of the act would more than likely
throw off the established federal election cycle. If President Arthur had died
in office sometime in 1883, for example – which was not beyond imagining; the man
suffered from Bright’s disease and actually did die in 1886 – the terms of the
1792 act mandated the holding of an election as soon as two months after the
declaration of the resulting double vacancy. Whoever then won the subsequent
special election would have been sworn in to office in March of 1884 to serve a
four-year term ending in 1888. The next presidential election – under the
correspondingly altered schedule – would accordingly have occurred in November
of 1887, the result being – from that point forward – an exceptionally crowded
electoral calendar. Remember, Garfield had been elected in 1880, followed by
mid-terms in 1882, the special election in 1883, more mid-terms in 1884 and
1886, another presidential election in 1887, and yet more mid-terms in 1888.
Even for the United States – a country which, by global standards, is
considered to be a bit election-mad – this would have been a bit too much
democracy in too short a period of time. Indeed, as Senator Hoar put it, the
likely result would have been little else but “confusion and trouble”.
And then, of course, there were the various
practical and philosophical implications of potentially placing the powers of
the presidency in the hands of either the speaker of the House or the president
pro tempore of the Senate. There are, it bears recalling, specific
qualifications placed by the Constitution upon the office of President. Article
II, Section 1 states that anyone who seeks to hold said office must be at least
thirty-five years old, must be a “natural-born” citizen of the United States,
and must have been a resident of the United States for at least fourteen years.
No such limitations are placed upon the offices of speaker or pro tem. To be
elected to the office of speaker – that is, to be elected to a seat in the
House – one has to be at least twenty-five years old, have been a citizen of
the United States for at least seven years, and reside – at time of election –
in the state one seeks to represent. Likewise, in order to be elected to the
office of Senate president pro tempore – that is, to be elected to a seat in
the Senate – one has to be at least thirty years old, have been a citizen of
the United States for at least nine years, and reside – at time of election –
in the state one seeks to represent. So what, then, if a duly elected speaker
or pro tem who did not meet the qualifications to serve as President was
suddenly placed in the position of potentially acceding to the office of chief
executive? Under the terms of the Succession Act of 1792, such a scenario would
seem to have been quite far from impossible.
Granted, there has never been a
foreign-born speaker of the House in the history of the United States. Nor has
there ever been a foreign-born pro tem. But both chambers have welcomed plenty
of legislators into their ranks who had their origins on foreign shores. Albert
Gallatin (1761-1849), for example, who served as American ambassador, Secretary
of the Treasury, and as a Congressman from Pennsylvania, was born in Geneva in
what is now the Swiss Confederation. Edward Dickinson Baker (1811-1861), close
friend and confidante of Abraham Lincoln and variously a Congressman from
Illinois and a Senator from Oregon, emigrated with his family to the United
States from his birthplace in London at the age of five. Knute Nelson
(1843-1923), who was born in Voss, Norway, served successively as a Congressmen
from Minnesota, Governor of Minnesota, and finally as Senator from Minnesota, the
latter position he occupied for the better part of thirty years. And the
Prussian-born Carl Schurz (1829-1906), after serving first in the Union Army
during the American Civil War and then as United States Minister to Spain and
Senator from Missouri, spent four years in the Hayes cabinet as Secretary of
the Interior. Now, in fairness, most of these men never came particularly close
to being elected either to the speakership or as president pro tempore of the
Senate. But Nelson’s tenure of twenty-eight years could easily have resulted in
his elevation to the post of pro tem near the end of his Senate service in the
early 1920s. And what then? What if, following the sudden and unexpected death
of President Warren G. Harding (1865-1923), the newly ascended Calvin Coolidge
(1872-1933) had stepped off the curb and got hit by a bus? Would Knute Nelson
have become president? The Constitution would seem to explicitly forbid such a
thing. And even if, to spare the Framers the embarrassment of having their work
ignored, he was merely declared to be “acting president”, would it not all
amount to the same proscribed outcome? A man who was not a “natural born”
citizen would possess the powers of the office of president. Either that, or
there would be no president at all.
It’s all a question of “if”, of course.
“If” this person was elected to a given legislative office, “if” that person
died without warning. But such things can happen. Indeed, such things have happened.
And it was surely with this kind of outcome – equally unexpected and
undesirable – in mind that the aforementioned Senator Hoar resubmitted his
revised presidential succession bill to Congress in the wanning months of 1885.
In its substance and aims, the document in question represented both a
broadening and a simplification of the previous succession procedure. Rather
than rely upon the presiding officers of the national legislature to step into
the breach in the event of a double vacancy at the head of the executive
branch, Hoar’s bill instead sought to devolve presidential authority upon the
various members of the cabinet, specifically organized in order of the
establishment of their associated departments. The result, by modern standards,
was not a particularly long list, but it was at least longer than that which
was contemplated by the previous Succession Act. The Secretary of State came
first, followed by the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of War, the
Attorney General, the Secretary of the Navy, and the Secretary of the Interior.
In the event of the double vacancy of the offices of President and
Vice-President, the next of these secretaries who had been duly confirmed by
the Senate – thus excluding recess appointments – and who otherwise met the
qualifications to become President themselves – thus excluding the likes of
former Interior Secretary Schurz – would, “act as President until the
disability of the President or Vice-President is removed or a President shall
be elected.” Hoar’s bill also sought to dispense with the special election
procedure included in the prior Succession Act, thereby cutting off the
possible emergence of an excessively crowded election calendar.
It was, by and large, a very sound
proposal, or so the members of the 49th Congress seemed to think.
Hoar doubtless helped his case by making a crucial observation that seemed to
point up the practicality of his plan. In the history of the United States
since the passage of the Presidential Succession Act of 1792, no president pro
tempore of the Senate and exactly one speaker of the House – that being James
K. Polk (1795-1849) – had been elected to the office of President. By way of
contrast, six secretaries of state had been elected President subsequent to
their service in cabinet. Now, either this meant that the career track that
tended to lead someone to a position of leadership in the legislative branch
did not necessarily lend itself to successful elevation to the office of
president, or it meant that the American people, when given the choice between
sending former speakers and pro tems to the White House or sending former
secretaries of state, chose the former by a substantially wide margin. Or,
quite possibly, it meant both of these things. Maybe legislators were
best suited to legislating, with which fact the American people happened to
agree. And maybe there was simply no substitute for executive branch
experience, for which reason the American people tended to reward former
leaders of the State Department whenever they sought the office of president.
In any case, there was an evident logic at work by which Hoar’s proposal sought
to abide. That is to say, if – statistically speaking – the secretary of state
was more likely to become president than either the pro tem or the speaker, why
not simply make the secretary of state next in line to the presidency?
In the end – and as aforementioned – the
various members of the 49th Congress responded warmly to this
observation on the part of Senator Hoar. Or a majority of them did, at any
rate. Both the Senate and the House debated Hoar’s proposal vigorously –
understandable given the weighty nature of the bill in question – and both
chambers ultimately determined to vote in the affirmative. On January 19th,
1886, President Cleveland signed the updated Presidential Succession Act into
law. And there it remained, the last word on presidential succession for the
next six decades. Several times during this period, its provisions were in
position to be invoked following the death of a president or vice-president. And
it does bear noting that, if Republican nominee Wendell Wilkie (1892-1944) had
won the Election of 1940, the act would almost certainly have been invoked in
1944 following the death of his running mate Charles McNary (1874-1944) in
February and his own death in October. But no such sequence of events took
place, of course. And in the final evaluation, all that the Presidential
Succession Act of 1886 really did was establish – like its predecessor – a list
of executive branch succession procedures that the American people found to be
unacceptable. So it was that a scant two months after being sworn into office
following the sudden death of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945), President
Harry S. Truman (1884-1972) was able to suggest to Congress the bare bones of a
proposal that would ultimately result in the passage of the Presidential
Succession Act of 1947.
