MB Civic

By Norman Ornstein | Saturday, March 3, 2007 | The Washington Post

Norman Ornstein is s a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and senior counselor to the Continuity of Government Commission. Here he reviews the evolution of Presidential succession from the time it was first considered in 1792, through the Garfield assassination and a subsequent law that put Cabinet members in line after the Vice President, and finally the reversal of that law under Harry Truman in 1946, which is still with us. That is, if both the President and the Vice President die or become incapacitated, third in line is the Speaker of the House, and fourth is the President Pro Tem of the Senate (usually the oldest Senator in the majority party).

Ornstein argues that members of Congress should not be in line for succession at all. He lays out a tight and convincing set of arguments to back up that assertion, and then he proposes a better way. I won’t steal his thunder, though. I will say that his propsal is a very sensible and fair one, and definitely an improvement over what we have now. Furthermore, the succession rules are laws, NOT incorporated into the Constitution or its Amendments, making them far easier to modify…BS

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/02/AR2007030201141_pf.html