Are you sure?
I seem to recall Bush & Cheney in the same room during the State of the Union speeches…
Other than the Vice President, a sucessor does not become the President. They become acting President and a new President (and vice President) must be elected.
Were they on a PLANE?
Does everyone in this order need to be 35 or older and born in the US?
This is incorrect. Please provide a cite to an amendment or legislation that says this.
To hold a Cabinet position, no. To be able to succeed to the Presidency, yes. If a given Cabinet member (e.g. Madelaine Albright) does not meet the requirements, he or she is passed over.
Cite? You may be right but I seem to recall otherwise. So I’m asking for authoritative evidence backing your statement.
I think you’re confusing succession with the acting presidency established by the 25th Amendment, and famously used by George Bush and Dick Cheney on certain brief occasions.
The answer I was going to give. By the way, the President need not be “born in the United States” – he must be a natural-born citizen. For example, Mitt Romney’s father was a contender for the Republican nomination in 1960, and was born in Mexico to American missionary parents, and John McCain was famously born in a military hospital adjacent to the Canal Zone to American parents.
If a given Secretary does not qualify for President, he is skipped over in the order of succession. (I believe I read that there are three people on the Obama cabinet who don’t qualify for one reason or another.)
Actually, it may be correct. I didn’t believe it either but a search turns up this:
Yes, of course. What I was trying and failing to say was that the designated survivor had to be a cabinet member who was eligible to become President. So Madeline Albright wouldn’t be chosen ever because she wasn’t born in the U.S.
[Insert snake joke]
The person would be Acting President, but there wouldn’t have to be a new election. The person would be Acting President until the term was over.
Yes, I forgot to mention that I disagreed with the second part of the statement, but I thought people were objecting to the first part.
The more likely scenario is that the House would impeach Geithner. If Geithner’s VP was found to be in on the plot, he’d be impeached too, at which time the newly elected Speaker of the House (since the remainder of the House is still alive in your scenario) would assume the presidency. Criminal proceedings for Geithner (and his veep, if necessary) in the Senate would come later.
ETA: Crap, forgot: the House impeaches, the Senate convicts. I suppose that gives the new speaker a perverse incentive to proceed with the veep’s impeachment even if the evidence is tenuous.
Or a world premiere of a film about a famous war hero.
Off-topic question which has always bugged me: it seems like the Senate Majority Leader seems to play a similar, if not identical, role to that of the Speaker of the House, but shouldn’t the President Pro-Tempore be fulfilling that role instead? Is it because Byrd has been sick all year? The Majority Leader isn’t on the list posted here.
I was mainly objecting to the second part. I am not aware of any provision for a presidential election other than at the standard intervals of four years. Anyone succeeding to the office, whether “acting” or not, would serve out the remaining part of the original term.
Where does the Constitution define the office of “Acting President”, or allow the office of President to go unfilled?
Law professor Akhil Amar has argued that there are serious constitutional concerns about the inclusion of members of congress in the line of succession. The Constitution specifies that successors must be “officers,” which arguably reaches only the executive branch. On the other hand, The Speaker and the president pro tem were included in the original Succession Act of 1792 (indeed, I believe they were the only named successors).
If I remember correctly the 1947 Act does not use the term “Acting President” but rather says that a successor “acts as President.”
The President pro tempore is basically a ceromonial role filled by the most senior member of the majority party.
Not the Constitution, but US Federal Law - 3 U.S. Code § 19 - Vacancy in offices of both President and Vice President; officers eligible to act | U.S. Code | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute