So, what if GWB was on vacation and decides that he just doesn’t want to get on AF1 for the flight back to DC. Instead, he decides that he’s done enough for the country and decides to take a prolonged vacation, free of his presidential duties.
What happens then? Is he obligated to return? Will he be forced?
Assuming the President simply refuses to do anything Presidential, under section 4 of the 25th Amendment, the VP and the Cabinet could declare to the Speaker of the House and the president pro tempore of the Senate that the President is unable to discharge the duties of his office, and the VP would become Acting President.
If the President decides to go back to work, he can tell the Speaker and the president pro tempore that he’s feeling much better, and he would resume the power of his office.
So there’s no difference between the president being legitimately ill and him just not feeling up for the job - in both cases the vice-president gets sworn in.
Obviously the spindoctors would put a spin on it and make it appear as if he’s actually sick, rather than letting the world know that he’s a lazy mofo. Oh well, pure speculation on my part. I was just curious if that had ever happened.
Don’t even think it. That would mean Cheney would be in charge . :eek:
Boy, that’s gotta look bad on your resume.
During GWB’s previous long vacations, the spin has been that it was a working vacation, and he met with staff and cabinet members every day at Crawford. That might even be true. Things are different for the Prez OTUS. Wherever he is, that’s his office.
Would the situation described in the OP fit the requirement? The President would be unwilling to perform his duties but not unable to. Could he be removed from office in those circumstances?
So are you referring to a situation akin to “Bartleby, the President”? “I’d prefer not to.”
I would think that if the President just went into a room and refused to do anything would be grounds for removal from office under the terms of the 25th Amendment. The President has a lot of stuff to do. It’s not like he can have other people decide these things for him.
Here’s what the Amendment says:
Sounds like this would cover this situation nicely. A refusenik President is certaily unable to discharge the pwoers and duties of the office. Besides, if the majority says so, all the President can do is contest it.
And the possibility that the President contests it but has no intention of discharging the duties is also looked at:
There might be the mother of all cable news coverage meltdowns, but legally either the President acts as President or he or she can be removed as President.
I presume, though, that if a President simply stopped working for an extended duration, because “he didn’t feel like it”, as opposed to being ill in some fashion, there would be no reason to expect him to contest the move…
“I quit. I’m sick of all this stuff. I’m going fishing. See you, well, never.” is how I read the OP’s hypothetical setup…
I disagree. As I said before there’s a major difference between being unwilling to do something and unable to do something. The OP clearly says the President made a choice to stop working.
Suppose, as a example, the CIA discovers that Canada is secretly developing nuclear weapons. A lot of people tell the President that a nuclear armed Canada is an unacceptable security risk to the United States and he has to launch an pre-emptive attack. The President says that while he’s not happy with Canada having nuclear weapons he feels that it’s an acceptable situation and he’s unwilling to order any military action.
So the Vice President and a majority of the cabinet decide that the President’s unwillingness to attack Canada indicates that he is unable to properly carry out his duties to defend the United States and decides to remove him from power so the Vice President can take over and launch an attack.
Legal or no?
Looking at the quoted material from Exapno Mapcase, the Congress gets involved in resolving the situation, since, in such a “disagreement” between the President and the VP & Cabinet (as layed out in post #11) , the President will surely “contest” an attempt to have his authority stripped.
I suppose that the VP et al. would attempt to claim that the President was too “mentally ill or fatigued” to carry out his duties. I presume the Congress would then want to verify the claim…
And the vote is less than 24 hours away, and Jack Bauer and a beautiful Canadian secret agent must race to find proof that the evidence of Canada’s nuclear program has been faked by a sinister cabal with ominous but unspecified motives!
The VP can act to remove the President. The President can then immediately transmit “to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists…” and he remains President until and unless two-thirds of both houses of Congress vote to remove him.
Any action taken by the V-P in the small interval between the removal and the letter of reinstatement would be subject to impeachment and trial if Congress felt that actions had been taken illegally.
You’re only covering half the situation, so your legal or no question doesn’t have a full answer.
Remember, though, that the pre-Watergate Gerald Ford said essentially that Congress can impeach for any reason. This remains true. And the 25th Amendment can be invoked for any reason.
Whether an impeached official loses at the subsequent trial or the removed president stays removed is a totally different issue.
The Constitution clearly states that the President must be “unable” to do his job in order to be removed. But a number of people here are arguing that a decision to go on an extended vacation is sufficient grounds for the Vice President to stage a coup. I just feel there is a large gap between the two positions.
Well, not just the Vice President; the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet*, whose members were after all appointed by the President. And Congress can then weigh in, and not only override the decision but, if they’re sufficiently pissed at it, impeach people, convict them in the Senate, and remove them from office.
*Unless you want to get into some really whacky scenario in which Congress–presumably a Congress controlled by the opposition party–has changed the rules, as they have the power to do in the 25th Amendment, and given some other body than “the Cabinet” (“the principal officers of the executive departments”)–the Executive Council of the Trilateral Commission; the U.N. General Assembly; Lodge #275 of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks; whatever–the President-removing power. But to do that Congress would have to pass a law, openly and in public; and they’d still have to suborn the President’s “running mate”, since the way I read the Constitution here both a majority of the Cabinet (Trilateral Commissioners, Elks, whatever) and the V.P. have to concur, the Veep being sort of like a Permanent Member of the Security Council in this case. (“Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide…”)
And just tell me, how would you know the difference if he stopped working?
It’d be kinda like the tinman on Wizard of Oz, I guess. Few squirts of oil to his neck and armpit and he’d be as good as new.
But yeah, one of the scenarios presented, the VP, the Cabinet, and the Legislature all moving to put the president out of power against his will, could be interpreted as a form of Coup, and one of the important things in the decision is whether the armed forces started taking orders from the Prez or the VP (since the chain of command runs through the Cabinet before it gets to the Prez, this could get messy).
That said, since the Prez usually gets to pick the VP and the Cabinet, the scenario is rather unlikely, but the sort of stuff that fun, tacky political thriller novels and TV movies are made of.
Exactly. In the real world there is no chance at all that such a coup would happen. The 25th Amendment could only be imposed on a president against his will in the most extraordinary of cases. Nobody even seriously proposed using it against Nixon in the height of Watergate. If it wasn’t used then, it never will be unless all of Washington agreed that the President unambiguously was not serving as President.