This is intriguing; hadn’t thought of that. That would certainly be how the new Senate would be reconstituted, by and large - members of the House would, of course, have to be elected in their districts through special elections (or the next regular election, if it came soon enough).
Still, you’d have a LOT of newbie senators, with all of the risks of politicking, log-rolling, etc. that I mentioned earlier. Maybe more, since most of them wouldn’t know each other. Governors can also appoint themselves to U.S. Senate vacancies (although those who’ve done so have, historically, been punished by the voters of their states for it at the next election). You could have a bunch of governors deciding to *carpe diem * and join the Senate after a national catastrophe, in the hopes of then landing the Presidency.
So, an interesting proposal, but I still like the Bayh proposal better.
I want to make it clear that I’m suggesting only that ONE governor would become President, after resigning from his or her state office. Other governors would not automatically become Cabinet secretaries. The new President would still have the power to nominate members of his or her own Cabinet, and to make other Federal appointments.
I like the by-population-of-state selection method better than by-order-of-admission-to-the-Union method. Bigger states are harder to run and have more complex issues, all things being equal (which, of course, they never are!) and would thus be better training for the Presidency, IMHO.
Many of the “big” states have weak governors who don’t have a lot of power. Florida has an elected cabinent. The Governor of Texas has less power than the lieutenant governor.
Besides, I"m positive I don’t want Rick Perry or Jeb Bush as President!
Well, the Governors only have two choices each, and there are plenty of former senators around. It would help if the appointee was nationally famous in a positive way. John Glenn (Ohio) comes to mind, as does Fred Thompson (Tennessee) though these two apparently hated each other. Former Presidential nominees like John McCain could also be tapped. It would probably be a fairly “famous” Senate of politically experienced people, since no governor will want to be known for putting a newbie on point at a moment of crisis. The new Senate would have to arrange their first meeting somewhere other than Washington (assuming the city was destroyed or inundated or whatnot) but it could be managed. Philadelphia and New York both have historical constitutional significance, among other venues.
The ultimate outcome, including who gets to be President, would depend on how many Democrats vs. Republican governors there were at the time of crisis.
I’m pretty certain that a House quorum is defined as ‘a majority of members Chosen, Sworn, and Living’. I know that’s in the somewhere.
So if I were alive and a member of the House and I determined that I was the only member of the House of Representatives to be ‘Chosen, Sworn, and Living’ I could then declare myself a quorum and elect myself Speaker and move on up to the White House.
So you’d have to have fewer than 218 Representatives and 50 Senators to break quorum in both (I’m going to assume “Majority” is based on the maximum size, and not the head count at any given moment). Since the Governors can appoint replacement Senators, it will be much easier and faster to bring that house up to quorum, get a Pro Tempore, and thus a President.
If the federal govt was completely and totally wiped out, there would be no more federal govt. There might be martial law in a couple of states, but there could be no nationwide martial law because no one would be left with authority to order it.
The states would try to get together and re-establish a govt at the federal level, but probably more than a few would use the opportunity to restructure the fed govt in a fashion more desirable to them, and some might even opt to go it alone from then on. Certainly any govt at the fed level after such a thing would have far far less authority than it does now, as states would rightfully use the opportunity to gain back some of the sovereignty theyve lost to the feds over the years. For example, in such an event, I cant really see a rational reason for California to opt back in, we’d be better off going our own way.
If, in one swipe, the fed govt was so wiped out that state pols might have to step in, effectively it would be the end of the union as we’ve known it, and very possibly the end of any union at all.
I think you’re assuming an unnatural degree of opportunism, even for politicians. Plus, from a practical standpoint, do you think state governments would really want to create their own Social Security programs and assume the full responsibility for Medicaid? They’d pretty much have to, because it’d be political suicide to say “Screw you, old people and sick, poor kids.”
Just because every elected official and Cabinet appointee was dead wouldn’t erase the laws they created. Provisions are in place to require special elections in the death of House members, and filling the Senate would be a simple matter of appointments. Once you have a House and Senate, the White House fills itself, because the order of succession is restored.
Finally, for 140 years now, we’ve thought of ourselves as Americans first and citizens of our state (or District!) second. I can’t see that being abandoned very easily.
Though I do think the District of Columbia should use the lack of a federal goverment within its territory to finally get itself a House member. Let’s hope it doesn’t require that desperate a situation for that to happen. :rolleyes:
Re: the quorum discussion in several previous posts
Doesn’t quite a lot of business in Congress get done in the absence of a quorum? It’s my understanding that a quorum is assumed unless someone suggests its absence. So if there are five remaining congressmen, couldn’t they can go about business as usual as long as nobody wants a quorum call?
I think if such a situation happened today, we might very well see an interim co-presidency between George H W Bush and Bill Clinton.
Yes, I know Bill Clinton can’t be elected to President or Vice President. Still, in such a situation, I think the nation would feel comfortable knowing that two former Presidents who have at least been briefed on national security issues in the past and probably know some of the planned responses.
Well, yes, because the houses of congress are divided up into specialized committees that do most of the actual work. The Senate Subcommittee on
Defense, for example, has 19 members who can meet and conduct hearings and only when they have something the Senate as a whole has to vote on will there be a presentation before the entire membership (or at least a quorum). If this Subcommittee had an important enough issue to discuss, it wouldn’t matter if the rest of the Senate showed up that day or not.
There simply couldn’t be a system where every issue is analyzed and debated at length before the entire membership. Nothing would ever get done.
I can imagine these men being appointed by their state governors as caretaker senators (though Bush41 would have just lost his son and Clinton his wife) who are not eligible to assume the office of President, even if elected to pro tempore, rather than some kind of ad hoc solution as you propose.