Say Kerry is elected, but on Jan. 20, the Inauguration gets bombed, and Kerry and Edwards are both killed. Even if the Speaker of the House or the President Pro Tem of the Senate step aside (perhaps because they’re of the opposite party, and conclude they have no mandate to govern), the rest of the chain of succession consists entirely of Cabinet secretaries — who are all still holdovers from the old Administration.
There’s thus no way for the Presidency to quickly pass into the hands of anyone who has the late President-elect’s, and thus indirectly the people’s, imprimatur. The best that can be done, unless I’m mistaken, is for one of the Republicans in the line of succession to get sworn in, propose a Democrat as Vice-President — preferably one who’s approved by the Democratic leadership — and then resign in the Vice-President’s favor. But this could involve quite a bit of time and acrimony, at a time when the country can’t afford the distraction.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), the chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, proposed an interesting Senate resolution: A nonbinding agreement (it probably can’t be made binding, given the President’s and the Senate’s broad constitutional powers in this area) that the outgoing President appoint, and the Senate confirm, some of the incoming President’s Cabinet picks before Inauguration Day. This would of course work best with a revision of the Presidential Succession Act (at least to remove the Congressional officials from the line of succession), which Sen. Cornyn would also favor; and it would surely still leave lots of other problems in any event. Still, I’m glad some people are thinking about this, and that a Republican Senator is willing to suggest it even when the immediately forthcoming transition — if there will be a transition — would be from a Republican to a Democrat.
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