Some weeks ago, there was a widely reported incident with a JetBlue Pilot who out of the blue (so to speak) went berserk:
So there basically is a well respected, highly professional and seemingly healthy man in the best years of his life suddenly suffering from a bout of mental illness.
I wonder what would be the course of events if this kind of thing happened to a sitting US President.
Let’s say the President, at a televised public event, suddenly started to act erratically, i. e. shouting, knocking over his lectern, assaulting bystanders, screaming that a nuclear war is about to start and then maybe returning to the Oval Office and locking himself in (if the latter is at all possible).
This President surly would have to be evaluated by medical professionals and possibly declared unfit for duty. But what exactly would be done in this situation? Who would have to initiate the process?
To make things even more complicated, this President would seemingly recover and refuse any medical treatment, claiming that everything is all right.
A Cecil column that is still not part of the on-line archive reports that in the waning days of the Nixon presidency, Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger ordered theater commanders to report to him any “unusual” orders they received from President Niixon. Cecil’s comment was a tongue-in-cheek speculation that Schlesinger was afraid Nixon might torch the planet in a fit of pique.
The closest thing was the illness of Woodrow Wilson in 1919 when he was campaigning for the United States joining the League of Nations. There have been all sorts of rumours over the years on just how well he was, how much his wife Edith was running the government (she didn’t even know who the presidential candidates were in 1912 which was shortly before she met him) and how much Vice President Marshall was kept away (who would have done something about the lack of good 5 cent cigar if he had the chance).
William Safire once wrote a novel about a President where the 25th amendment hqd to be used and along the way pointed out some problems the amendment didn’t answer.
The bigger worry would be a President who, because of an undiagnosed mental disorder, a series of small strokes, brain trauma or whatever, doesn’t suddenly lose it but instead suffers a slowly progressive impairment. Who’s going to be able to see when exactlky he’s gone from “normal” to impaired? What will the doctors use as a baseline to judge impairment? Will the public side with the Pres or with the VP and Cabinet?
On review, take what Sarabellum said but make it just a little more apparent to everyone.
That’s the easy question to answer. Given the number of and detailed nature of the President’s physicals, I’m sure his doctors will have extensive baseline data to work from. It’s the other questions that will bring down the country.
The amendment also provides that the President can then certify that no disability exists. If the VP and cabinet continue to disagree, the dispute goes to Congress.
The real problems of course start when the incumbent President fights his removal from office (indeed a very 24ish scenario).
The JetBlue pilot is in prison because he endangered a flight which is a crime. But had he been an ordinary executive in the airline, let’s say: in accounting, and freaked out in a staff meeting, he would seek medical help and could even have a chance to continue working in his job. Nobody will, of course, let that pilot anywhere near a cockpit for the rest of his life.
By the same token, had a President had a complete breakdown, nobody would be comfortable with him still being in office, even if he, according to his own testimony, has fully recovered.
How long would this process take, though? A lot of damage can be done in a short amount of time-if the Prez wigs out tomorrow, will he be out of office before the end of the day? Week? Month?
Another fictional depictation of this situation is Night of Camp David by Fletcher Knebel (the same author who wrote Seven Days in May about an attempted military coup in the United States).
Yes. That was Full Disclosure, published in 1978. It’s a pretty good political thriller. The problem there isn’t that the President goes nuts, but rather that he’s blinded in an assassination attempt while visiting the Soviet Union. He returns to the U.S. and tries to keep doing his job but can’t quite pull it off. He wins in the Cabinet vote to remove him from office, but only narrowly, and then decides to resign.
It could probably be done within hours, if they really want to.
As for damage… well, if the President is clearly crazy, I’d like to think that people would simply ignore his orders, knowing that any crime implied by such an action would immediately be pardoned by his successor. Contrary to popular belief, the U.S. Government isn’t staffed by automatons.
The intertesting thing about Night of Camp David was that it was written in 1965, and the 25th Amendment was ratified in 1967. At the time Knebel wrote Camp David there was no procedure for dealing with an incapacitated President!
There was a Supreme Court, John Pickering, whom people thought had mental problems, that the Jefferson Administration had impeached and convicted in 1803. Apparently it was a raging debate because he hadn’t committed treason or other high crimes. The Jefferson adminstration and its “Democratic-Republicans” weren’t happy that the departing John Adams and the Federalists in Congress had put a lot of their members in judgeships right before Jefferson took over/ Successful in this, they then tried it with another judge, Samuel chase, who wasn’t insane and this put a damper on Presidents trying to remove judges for partisan reasons.John Pickering (judge) - Wikipedia
I recall an SNL skit based on somebody’s tell-all about Nixon’s last night in the WH – at one point Kissinger says, “Yes, Mr. President. Excuse me, I have to go instruct the Joint Chiefs of Staff to disregard all presidential orders.” Nixon does not appear to notice that.
I always enjoyed the west wing, president Barlett was a great character. But i always thought that he really should have resigned/not run for a second term when it became clear…
SPOILER FOR A 10 YEAR OLD SHOW BUT JUST IN CASE
…that he had MS and could as they explicity point out in the show “Have an attack and be mentally impaired without any external sign of this”.
There have been several accounts that Nixon, with Kissinger’s connivance, frequently made threats of some form of Armageddon in their negotiations with the Vietnamese and the Russians, and in the Middle East. Maybe better to say that Kissinger made these threats, claiming that Nixon was “crazy” and might do anything. Nixon was in on it.
I have to wonder just how closely held that little scheme was. They were both really secretive, and it’s entirely plausible Schlesinger heard about Kissinger’s claims and threats from third parties, didn’t know it was a negotiating strategy, and was genuinely concerned about Nixon’s sanity and stability.
Then again, since other stories have come out about Nixon lecturing the paintings of former presidents during his finals days, that’s a pretty good indicator he was going off his rocker.
