The cabinet posts end with their resignation or by being fired by the new President.
I once posted suggesting that Bill might become VicePresident, thus allowing Lieberman to keep his butt in the Senate. They told me I was nuts and shut my thread. Genius is pain.
How about Bill, as Commander in Chief, orders “Landslide” George to finish out his hitch with the Texas Air National Guard?
Tee-hee. I like this idea!
There was an op-ed piece in the NY Times Saturday that said that Congress could fairly easily designate someone other than Hastert or Strom Thurmond (or Robert Byrd) to serve as acting president. Since each house is controlled by a different party, a compromise candidate would have to be chosen. It could be just about anyone who is eligible. I could imagine that Secretary of Defense Cohen would be an acceptable caretaker president to both parties.
Also, these are the people whom the electorate, in its infinite wisdom, decided should run the House of Representatives. These include voters who vote for “liberal” Republicans who, when the new Congress is convened, will vote to keep the DeLays, Armeys, et. al. in power.
Ya mean, really, that there could be a Jewish president not named Lieberman?!?
Actually William Cohen isn’t Jewish. His father is, but his mother isn’t and he opted to be a Christian of an unspecified denomination.
However Cohen would still shake up a lot of people if he became acting President because his wife is African-American and that would freak out a significant portion of the United States I imagine.
Clinton can NOT be vice-president no matter what! There is a line in the consititution stating that the vice-presidential office has the same qualifications as the president. No person may be president for more than two terms (unless a vice president assumes the presidency with less than two years left in the term). Therefore, Clinton cannot and will not become vice-president.
Y’know, right after I submitted my post I realised that it was awfully bad of me to assume he was Jewish based on his last name.
Well, this has been the subject of MANY threads that I’m too lazy to look up, but basically, the argument goes that nobody can be ELECTED president more than twice. Concievably Clinton could become president, but not be ELECTED.
I don’t want to hijack this thread though, so I suggest that you do a search for vice president, clinton, term, elected, or constitution. These discussions took place about a month ago.
FWIW, I have an Irish-Catholic great-great grandmother whose last name was Cohen. Sarah Cohen to be precise.
Please, let’s NOT get into the whole Clinton-as-VP question again. In case you’re wondering, the answer is that there’s a nitpick in the Constitution which just might conceivably make it allowable, but the Supremes would probably rule that to be against the intent. If you have the urge to debate it further than that, you can save yourself a lot of trouble by just finding the nearest brick wall and banging your head against it repeatedly.
I don’t see why the Republicans would wait until after Jan. 6 to do something about finding a suitable Acting President, if Mr. Thurmond also declines the ‘honor’. Currently, both houses are under Republican control; they could simply pass a law designating a different line of succession for ‘Acting President’ and decide on their own candidate for the job.
As for naming a new President Pro Tempore, as I stated in another thread, the President of the Senate does not participate in a vote for President Pro Tempore. Therefore, with a 50/50 split, the Dems don’t have the votes after Jan. 6 to remove Mr. Thurmond from that position, even if the Republicans don’t have the votes to elect someone else without the help of at least one Democrat. See Rule #1 of the Senate; BobT can supply a hyperlink to the website if you need it. 
And some people think the Irish were interbred with the Spanish…
Have fun reading the Rules of the Senate here:
In some interpretation, the preceding was the first chapter of the satanic bible.
I remember reading somewhere (Or at least THINKING I read somewhere) that in the event of a “National State of Emergency”, the Government would pretty much lock down until the situation was resolved. If this was the case, would it be feasible for Clinton to declare such a state of emergency, thus preventing WHOEVER wins the outcome of the elections (TBA ~2004) from taking over? The arguments included having a stable goverment to ride out the problems…
With the currect flare-up among the West bank, or other hot spots around the world, I wouldn’t find it that much of a stretch for someone to find something that could be classified as a top level National Threat. Maybe have India and Pakistan make shiny glass-bottomed craters in their back-yards or convince China that the US doesn’t really care all that much about Taiwan anymore and we really wouldn’t mind at all if they tried to take it back, etc etc…
What do you all think?
Very dubious - considering that having a Civil War didn’t qualify as a national emergency, and was not sufficient to prevent elections. The Constitution says there’ll be a transfer on January 20, 2001, and there will be.
I wouldn’t put it past Clinton to try this, but given the standard Abe Lincoln set it surely woudn’t succeed. After all, if cannonballs raining down on our capital wasn’t a good enough reason to cancel the presidential election, then why should some shooting on the other side of the world qualify?
Ah, but in the election of 1864, weren’t the electors of rebel states excluded? If Clinton limits the state of emergency to Florida . . .