When Ronald Reagan was shot by John Hinckley, there was confusion regarding what was required to transfer presidential powers temporarily and to whom they should be transferred until the Vice-president, George H.W. Bush, could be sworn in. Reporters seeking clarification amid the chaos literally mobbed the Secretary of State, Alexander Haig, and shouted questions at him. One reporter asked, “Who’s in charge?” to which Haig answered, “I’m in control here.” Mr. Haig obviously wanted to quell fears that the ship of state was rudderless, but his answer was widely criticized. The real question that needed to be answered was what is the legal mechanism for only temporarily transferring presidential authority without permanently transferring the presidency to someone not elected to be President.
When Presidents died while in office, which happened with alarming frequency after 1840, the custom and practice was to grant the Vice-president the powers and title of the office. Presidents who died from illness or assassination during their tenure as chief executive included William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, Warren Harding, William McKinley, Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy. Assassination attempts, life-threatening illnesses, and resignations affecting Andrew Jackson, Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Gerald Ford also motivated lawmakers to write the XXV Amendment to the Constitution to settle the debate concerning who is in charge when the President dies, resigns, or is permanently or temporarily disabled and what is the mechanism for transferring power.
The issue of ‘Who’s in charge’ arose recently in connection with the emergency hospitalization of Lloyd Austin, the Secretary of Defense. He allegedly underwent “elective” prostate cancer surgery, was released from the hospital, and subsequently developed severe pain, necessitating readmission to the hospital. Spokespersons for President Biden indicated that they were not fully informed regarding these developments, and the Assistant Secretary of Defense, Shawn Skelly, was not in a position to assume Secretary Austin’s responsibilities. She was the Assistant Secretary of Defense who routinely manages functions most closely aligned with Secretary Austin’s responsibilities, but there are 18 other Assistant Secretaries of Defense on the Pentagon payroll.
There are several problems with the scenario alleged by the Pentagon and the White House in connection with Secretary Austin’s hospitalizations. The claim is being made that Secretary Austin tried to keep his elective cancer surgery secret. As one of the highest profile members of the current administration, with numerous military and Secret Service agents assigned to protect him, that he had any expectation of privacy is absurd. Even the description of his prostate cancer surgery as “elective” is absurd. A Brazilian butt lift is “elective surgery.” Removing the prostate gland to manage cancer is only an elective procedure in the sense that radiation therapy may be an alternative, nonsurgical treatment. Secretary Austin was criticized for not alerting the President to his emergency hospitalization and not formally designating who should be contacted in his absence from the Pentagon. Are we forgetting that he is an advisor to the President, but not the President himself? Are we expecting Cabinet members to personally arrange for coverage when they are crippled by pain after major surgery? No one expected Ronald Reagan to personally call George H. W. Bush just before he was anesthetized to remove that bullet from his chest to update the Vice-president on his odds for survival.
When the former president developed Covid and had to be rushed by helicopter to the hospital to manage his deteriorating lung function, there was less concern with a leadership vacuum than that expressed during Secretary Austin’s hospitalization. That the former president could coherently conduct the business of the nation’s chief executive while being managed for dangerously low blood oxygen levels is a myth that only Americans who still view him as a “gift from God” could entertain.
Even though the Constitution has been amended to make the Vice-president the President in name and in fact if the elected chief executive dies or becomes unable to serve as President, little has been done since the creation of the office of Vice-president to prepare him or her for the presidency. Franklin Roosevelt’s first Vice President, John Nance Garner, famously described the office as being “not worth a bucket of warm piss.” Abraham Lincoln’s vice president during his first term was Hannibal Hamlin from Maine. Hamlin found himself so irrelevant in the Lincoln administration that he described himself as “only a fifth wheel of a coach” and spent much of his time during his Vice Presidency in the Maine State Guard, a militia unit. William McKinley’s backers offered Theodore Roosevelt the Vice-presidency as a way of making him politically irrelevant; but the gods laughed at this lame attempt to sideline Teddy, and McKinley was assassinated.
Our government has never lacked redundancy. When any official or agency fails to take action, the real dilemma is immediately identifying which official or agency has the authority to step in and manage the situation. When the Capitol building was stormed in the January 6 insurrection, the government did not lack the wherewithal to intervene and stop the violence. There were a variety of military and nonmilitary bodies ready, willing, and able to intervene and secure the building and protect our congressmen and congresswomen. The events that unfolded were a consequence of the former President’s being viewed as the only person authorized to dispatch the necessary “men and materials” to suppress the rioters and secure the Capitol building. He opted to allow the violence to escalate to the point that the lives of members of Congress and of the Vice-president were in jeopardy. He made it clear that he was in charge, and as a consequence, America had the first transfer of presidential power in its history that was not peaceful.
Dr. Lechtenberg is an Easton resident who graduated from Tufts University and Tufts Medical School in Massachusetts and subsequently trained at The Mount Sinai Hospital and Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in Manhattan. He worked as a neurologist at several New York Hospitals, including Kings County and The Long Island College Hospital, while maintaining a private practice, teaching at SUNY Downstate Medical School, and publishing 15 books on a variety of medical topics. He worked in drug development in the U.S., as well as in England, Germany, and France.
