Norm's Canary
America is a Story of Close Calls …
America is indeed a story of close calls.
Without the American Succession Act and other interventions, the United States could very easily have been plunged into political anarchy on more than one occasion if the pendulum had just swung ever so slightly the other way.”
Harry Truman had no Vice President in place for the longest time after he became President at FDR’s passing. What if the assassination attempt at Blair House had been successful?
Lyndon Johnson did not have a Vice President for more than a year after Kennedy’s assassination. What if the then-Speaker had been too old to succeed LBJ, or the President Pro Tempore had been too old, too?
What if Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward had been successfully murdered in the conspiracy that took Lincoln’s life? When Johnson was almost impeached by the House, who would have become president? Benjamin Wade, the President Pro Tempore of the Senate? Who was he?
What if President Tyler had been killed by the explosion aboard the U.S.S. Princeton? Who would have succeeded him in 1844?
What if Adams and Jefferson had been killed during the Tripoli scrimmages by the Pasha? What then? Who then?
These succession close calls certainly exposed several critical weaknesses in what America would do in the event of a cataclysmic event.
The line of succession spelled out in our Constitution does not provide for what-ifs beyond the federal level. What if the federal government had been annihilated in a singular, well-placed mushroom cloud, or the unchecked spread of a global pandemic like COVID-19?
For Continuity’s Sake
American Enterprise Institute resident scholar Norman Ornstein has been raising essentially this same series of questions about what would have happened if a bomb had wiped out the U.S. government, had United Flight 93 crashed into the U.S. Capitol instead of fields in Shanksville, Pennsylvania on 9/11 instead.
Had United Flight 93 landed on the U.S. Capitol, which would have no doubt killed or injured many members of Congress, too, Ornstein asks how would you have operated the government if no quorum of Congress could be called.
United Flight 93 might have had that effect on American history, had the flight not departed Newark Airport some 40 minutes late – some 40 minutes that gave an early advantage to her hero passengers who had heard about the trade center attacks by the other terrorists and crashed their plane into southern Pennsylvania fighting the terrorists on board in fierce hand-to-hand combat to prevent just such a greater tragedy.
Ornstein noted at discussions in the early 2000s that the Constitution dictates that House members may be replaced only through special elections which Ornstein rightly notes might take months to organize.
So, he asked, if there is no Congress, which he also says means that no one exists with the authority to declare war, appropriate money, or make laws, what do you do? Do you declare Martial Law?
Ornstein has made it his mission since then to have a “will” for lack of a better term, of what will happen to American governing if Congress can no longer govern either.
