Crazy presidential/vice presidential question

[UltraVires]

I wouldn’t call such an interpretation “hyper-literal.” It is a plain text argument.

There are two ways to become President: by election, or by being VP when the President dies/resigns/is convicted by the Senate. Further, officers in the line of succession may exercise the powers and duties of the President is everyone above them in line dies/resigns.

So, a judge would be hard pressed to interpret a clause which very clearly only excludes one method of becoming President, and says nothing of exercising powers and duties of the President, as forbidding all three.

There is a rule of statutory construction that when the text is plain and unambiguous, you don’t even look at the intent of the drafters.

[That_Don_Guy]

We’ve had this conversation before.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@Lord_Feldon

Nobody is president, as only a vice president can succeed to the actual office. As to who exercises the powers of the presidency during the vacancy, the Presidential Succession Act uses the exact same language as the 12th Amendment (“eligible to the office of President”) that is debated when talking about Bill as VP, so it’s the same question about how you view the 20th Amendment.

There’s also the issue of whether the speaker or president pro tempore are constitutionally eligible at all, as Congress can only empower an “officer of the United States” to act as president.

It’s true that the Presidential Succession Act uses the term “act as president,” which is ambiguous. But you yourself note that it also defines positions as “officer” that are at least equally ambiguous if not actually contrary to intent. And it’s also true that the 25th Amendment has been invoked three times so that the Vice President was temporarily acting as president without anyone, seemingly, considering him to be president but merely had the “powers and duties” of the president.

The other side is that Article II of the Constitution originated those terms of art, requiring a succession act to determine what “Officer shall then act as President.” Th founders themselves interpreted that Officer as President Pro Tempore of the Senate in the 1792 Presidential Succession Act. And the first controversy over whether a vice president “acted” as President or “became” president was in 1841 when Harrison died. Tyler set the precedent that he became president for the rest of the term. Not through any formal procedure, but because everybody agreed upon it and nobody challenged it in any way.

The rest is hypothetical enough that zillions of political novels and dramas have used it as a plot point. It’s still hard to look at a plausible world in which a permanent replacement for the president is not The President, no ifs, ands, or buts.

[UltraVires]

@Exapno_Mapcase

The rest is hypothetical enough that zillions of political novels and dramas have used it as a plot point. It’s still hard to look at a plausible world in which a permanent replacement for the president is not The President, no ifs, ands, or buts.

Maybe, but many states do it. When the Governor steps down, his lieutenant or the Senate President will take the title “Acting Governor” for the remainder of the term.

There’s no real practical difference other than the implied statement that this individual isn’t really governor; he’s just keeping the seat warm until the people can decide who the real governor will be.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

Nobody cares who the governor of your state is. Everybody in the world cares (probably not even hyperbolically) who the President of the United States is. There is nothing comparable in politics. You might make a case for the similar impossibility of an Acting Pope or the King/Queen of what we’ll always call England, I suppose, but the President is the President, not an Acting Anything.