There is no Secret Plan that Changes the Presidential Line of Succession

I'm not buying the argument that Ronald Reagan made some dastardly change to the order of Presidential succession. I'm not saying he didn't--it's possible. But amending a document for "speed and clarity" does not equate to amending the document to change the order of Presidential succession.

New Yorker writer Jane Mayer's new book, The Dark Side, opens with a shocker. Apparently sometime in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan issued a "secret executive order" that in the event of the death of the president and the vice president "established a means of re-creating the executive branch." Reagan's order violated the express terms of the Constitution and governing statutes.

Does a similar order exist today? We aren't told. But we do know that Dick Cheney participated in the secret "doomsday" exercises under the Reagan order, and given his central role at present, it is imperative for Congress to find out.

Right away, I can tell you that is that were the case, Republicans who served in the Reagan and Bush administrations would have never allowed that to continue during eight years of the Clinton Presidency. They would have spoken up if that were the case. The insecurity and pride of Newt Gingrich is proof enough that whatever changes were made did not stand between him and Executive power.

I think that's barking up the wrong tree. The Dick Cheney of the 1980s was a vastly different public figure than the one so caricatured today. This is a man who, as of the mid 1990s, was still sane as far as whether we should have deposed Saddam Hussein when he indicated that overthrowing Saddam's regime wasn't worth American lives. His importance during the Reagan administration is overblown--he was a frequent critic of the Reagan administration. (They weren't conservative enough for him, and that's why he was more of a threat to school lunches than subverting the ascension of the Speaker of the House to the Presidency.)

Without knowing what Reagan did, it's not easy to judge the severity of the changes. From a strictly by-the-book interpretation of our laws, you could produce list after list of examples where the law wasn't followed to the letter by each and every administration and where nothing was done about it.

Any "doomsday" planning in that era would have centered around nuclear holocaust--not terrorism. Terrorists in the 1980s hijacked planes and gathered in small cells to kidnap people. They did not bring down nation-states and threaten to wipe out elected governments.

I wouldn't spend much time worrying about the Presidential line of succession. It's already pretty quirky as it is--and we need to clarify the standing of cabinet secretaries and make it a practice to confirm at least one or two BEFORE the inauguration of the President (and ensure they are NOT at the inaugural itself) in order to ensure proper succession.

"President Michael Armacost" is a phrase with a familiar ring to it in the nation's capital, for Armacost served ably as Brookings' fifth president from 1995-2002. But Armacost might have become president not of Brookings, but of the United States. Had that happened, he would have needed all the leadership skills he had honed at the highest levels of U.S. foreign service—and perhaps more. For an Armacost presidency would have come about because of a catastrophic terrorist attack, combined with potentially disabling quirks in the U.S. presidential succession system.

The story begins on January 20, 1989, at the inauguration of the 41st president, George H. W. Bush. At noon on that day, President Ronald Reagan's term expired, and Chief Justice William Rehnquist administered the oath of office to Bush. What if, during that ceremony, terrorists had flown a plane into the West front of the Capitol, where the inauguration ceremony was taking place, or set off a powerful bomb? The result would have been chaos. Any attack against U.S. political leadership is a threat to national security, but the inauguration is the most vulnerable time for the government, when the mechanisms for providing an orderly transfer of power to a presidential successor threaten to break down.

President Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle were, of course, present at the ceremony. Next in line of succession were Speaker of the House Jim Wright and Senate President Pro Tempore Robert Byrd, both of whom attended the inauguration. A devastating terrorist attack would have killed all of them along with many members of Congress and several Supreme Court justices, including the chief justice.

So who would have been president? Next in line after the speaker and the president pro tem are the cabinet officers in the chronological order of the creation of their departments. But which cabinet? Because the attack came on Inauguration Day, George Bush had not yet nominated his cabinet. A several-hour interval always ensues between a new president's taking office at noon and Senate confirmation of the cabinet.

So in the case of a calamitous attack at an inauguration, the new president would have no cabinet, and the presidency would pass to the cabinet members of the previous administration. A presidential term has a beginning and end defined by the Constitution. At noon on January 20, 1989, the terms of President Reagan and Vice President Bush ended. But the terms of cabinet members are not constitutionally limited. Cabinet members stay in office until they resign, die, are impeached and convicted, or are removed by a president. So any of Reagan's cabinet members who had not resigned at noon would have remained in the line of succession. And in 1989, several additional wrinkles would have complicated still further the transfer of power from Reagan to Bush—highlighting yet again the difficulties in our presidential succession system. Three of Reagan's cabinet members—Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady, Attorney General Richard Thornburgh, and Education Secretary Lauro Cavazos—stayed on after his term ended, as Bush had asked them to serve in his new administration. Reagan's other cabinet secretaries resigned at noon, leaving their departments in the hands of acting secretaries.

According to the Presidential Succession Act, an acting secretary of a department is in the line of succession as long as he or she has been confirmed by the Senate for some position. On January 20, 1989, at noon, Reagan's secretary of state, George Shultz, had resigned, as had the number-two person in the State Department, John Whitehead. The number-three person at State, the undersecretary for political affairs, who became acting secretary of state, was Michael Armacost. As the secretary of state is first among the cabinet in the line of succession, Armacost would have become president of the United States.

Good stuff. More akin to a Clancy or Le Carre novel, but good stuff nonetheless.

We're a long way from normalcy, aren't we?

The Strain Between The Reagans and John McCain

Someone has finally managed to write about the less-than-enthusiastic endorsement John McCain received from Nancy Reagan earlier this year. The Los Angeles Times has a story out about how McCain's infidelity and his abandonment of his first wife put a great deal of strain on the relationship between the Reagans and McCain in the early 1980s. This is a shocking revelation, in a campaign so full of shocking revelations that I can hardly keep up:

In a written statement, she [Nancy Reagan] described McCain as "a good friend for over 30 years." But that friendship was strained in the late 1970s by McCain's decision to divorce his first wife, Carol, who was particularly close to the Reagans, and within weeks marry Cindy Hensley, the young heiress to a lucrative Arizona beer distributorship.

The Reagans rushed to help Carol, finding her a new home in Southern California with the family of Reagan aide Edwin Meese III and a series of political and White House jobs to ease her through that difficult time.

McCain, who is about to become the GOP nominee, has made several statements about how he divorced Carol and married Hensley that conflict with the public record.

In his 2002 memoir, "Worth the Fighting For," McCain wrote that he had separated from Carol before he began dating Hensley.

"I spent as much time with Cindy in Washington and Arizona as our jobs would allow," McCain wrote. "I was separated from Carol, but our divorce would not become final until February of 1980."

Now, once again--are you shocked that the official record contradicts what McCain said?

An examination of court documents tells a different story. McCain did not sue his wife for divorce until Feb. 19, 1980, and he wrote in his court petition that he and his wife had "cohabited" until Jan. 7 of that year -- or for the first nine months of his relationship with Hensley.

Although McCain suggested in his autobiography that months passed between his divorce and remarriage, the divorce was granted April 2, 1980, and he wed Hensley in a private ceremony five weeks later. McCain obtained an Arizona marriage license on March 6, 1980, while still legally married to his first wife.

Until McCain filed for divorce, the Reagans and their inner circle assumed he was happily married, and they were stunned to learn otherwise, according to several close aides.

"Everybody was upset with him," recalled Nancy Reynolds, a top aide to the former president who introduced him to McCain.

What were they upset by? The possible bigamy--which is probably questionable, but who the hell takes out a marriage license to another woman while they're still married to another woman? The womanizing? The lying? The adultery--which, correct me if I'm wrong, is something the military frowns on. Remember--McCain was on active duty until 1981.

But the Media Mancrush continues unabated.

I went to lawyers.com, because that's how I roll, and I even looked it up--when you take out a marriage license, you have to provide:

Copies of divorce decrees from any former marriages will need to be presented.

And McCain wasn't divorced yet! Does that mean anything? Probably not, but oh well.

Astronomy, not Astrology

When I see Mike Huckabee talk about "needing to bring the Constitution in line with the word of the living God" and other such nonsense, I'm reminded of how Nancy Reagan used to bring an astrologer into the White House to determine when the President of the United States of America would be allowed to, I dunno, give speeches and sign things. I'm connecting the two of them because it always floors me that there isn't an abundance of ridicule and outrage directed at people who seem to have ridiculous ideas. Tolerance is fine, but sometimes too much tolerance means you have, well, people doing crazy shit on the public dime. Nancy might have her reasons for having done so, and Huckabee might be running for the highest office in a country where he simply doesn't understand the rule of law or how we govern ourselves. My question is--can we afford to have that in the future? Can we afford to let the misguided superstitions of people become legitimate ideas for debate and discussion? Can you let things like this actually go without mocking them for what they are?

Have you ever had to explain to people that "astronomy" is a science and that "astrology" is inane, utter bullshit practiced by the insane and the deranged?

Sometimes, you have to break it down for people.

This is an image of the planet Mercury, and it includes some features that have never been seen by human eyes until now. This is astronomy, and this is science:



This is astrology, and never the two shall meet:



[a tip o' the hat to Bad Astronomy for the juxtaposition of these things...]

It's Saturday Morning and I am a Huge Daniel Shore Fan

When I heard Alberto Gonzalez in his press conference on Monday say “Mistakes were made” I got a sick feeling. When his boss said it Tuesday, I damned near went visceral.

I remember the 80’s. I was a SAC wife with three babies, ready to go where the orders…ordered. It was also a time when U.S. service personnel were targeted in bombings in discotheques, airplanes were hijacked regularly and a barracks bombed in Beirut (that happened the last time the U.S. took sides in a civil war and Cap Weinberger ordered Muslim villages shelled in Lebanon). Because my husband had to fly in uniform, we took different planes.

I know things the cheerleaders for Reagan don't know. I was right smack in the middle of that clusterfuck, and felt like a god-damned pawn. Of course, I felt like a pawn because I was a pawn. Let me tell you, from someone who was fucking there - peace broke out in spite of Ronald Reagan, not because of him. If you want to give credit for the hastening of a natural social evolution, don’t thank Reagan. Thank the Strategic Air Command, rock-n-roll, Levi’s jeans and McDonalds for the U.S. victory in the cold war. Just so the record is clear. But don’t just take my word for it – ask around, find someone about 50 who was in the Air Force in their 20’s and ask them. Prepare to hear a truth about that *magical era*that just ain’t told, because it doesn’t appear in the program for the worship services in the church (cult?) of unholy Reagan worship. That’s a bubble of denial that really needs to be popped.

Anyway – when I heard “mistakes were made” I heard Ronald Reagan and the state of the union in 1987 – he stood there and gave cover to every mendacious fuck-up made by every mendacious fuck-up in his entire administration who took part in the treasonous Iran-Contra Affair.

But though we've made much progress, I have one major regret: I took a risk with regard to our action in Iran. It did not work, and for that I assume full responsibility. The goals were worthy. I do not believe it was wrong to try to establish contacts with a country of strategic importance or to try to save lives. And certainly it was not wrong to try to secure freedom for our citizens held in barbaric captivity. But we did not achieve what we wished, and serious mistakes were made in trying to do so. We will get to the bottom of this, and I will take whatever action is called for. But in debating the past, we must not deny ourselves the successes of the future. Let it never be said of this generation of Americans that we became so obsessed with failure that we refused to take risks that could further the cause of peace and freedom in the world. Much is at stake here, and the Nation and the world are watching to see if we go forward together in the national interest or if we let partisanship weaken us. And let there be no mistake about American policy: We will not sit idly by if our interests or our friends in the Middle East are threatened, nor will we yield to terrorist blackmail.

And now, ladies and gentlemen of the Congress, why don't we get to work? I am pleased to report that because of our efforts to rebuild the strength of America, the world is a safer place. Earlier this month I submitted a budget to defend America and maintain our momentum to make up for neglect in the last decade. Well, I ask you to vote out a defense and foreign affairs budget that says yes to protecting our country. While the world is safer, it is not safe.

If you weren’t in my shoes back then, you don’t know what those words sounded like. We knew that we were at increased danger in our assigned duty stations outside the U.S. because of policies of the Reagan administration. We felt like the political football that was kicked, and bounced off the goal-posts, then got pounced on. No matter who is speaking, when I hear “mistakes were made” I don’t hear contrition. I hear “Fuck you, cannon fodder.”

Now, fully twenty years later, the same mantras get chanted and even more American service personnel are being killed in the middle east in all-out open warfare because of foolish and foolhardy policies of a corrupt, mendacious Republican administration.

Learned any lessons yet America? Or are you still riding the short bus?

ITMFA.