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THE PRESIDENTIAL LINE OF SUCCESSION: WHO'S NEXT?

© John S. Cooper

Most Americans have never thought about what happens if the President and Vice President leave office. Most have never had to. Most Americans alive in 1963 remember the frightening scene when President Kennedy was shot and Vice President Johnson was helped into Parkland Hospital clutching his left shoulder. Johnson, who had previously suffered a major heart attack, was rumored to have suffered another during the assassination attempt. Of course, Johnson did not have a heart attack that day. The pain was from being thrown to the floor of his limousine by alert Secret Service agents.

From the beginning of our Republic, there have been plans concerning the presidential line of succession. The Constitution says that the Vice President will take over for the president, and if both die, resign or are removed, Congress shall decide who comes next. We have never had to go beyond the Vice President in the line of succession, but we have come close a number of times.

The first Presidential Succession Act, passed in 1792, provided that after the President and Vice President, the President Pro Tempore of the Senate would serve as President. If there was no President Pro Tempore of the Senate at the time, then the Speaker of the House of Representatives would serve. The line of succession would then proceed through the cabinet officers in the order their departments were created. That would have been State, Treasury, War, Attorney General, and so on.

This law was almost used on several occasions. When William Henry Harrison died after only one month in office, there was a question as to whether John Tyler was Acting President or President in his own right. (See my earlier article "John Tyler: Presidential Precedent.") But during his term, there were three separate times when the line of succession was almost followed further down the line.

Shortly after John Tyler took office, the carriage he was riding in ran out of control. He was heading for the cliffs over the Potomac in Rock Creek Park when a young cavalry officer caught up with the carriage and stopped it. Had his carriage gone over the cliff, the President Pro Tempore of the Senate would have become President.

Shortly after that incident, the Congress introduced the first bill of impeachment against a President. Tyler had vetoed (twice) Whig sponsored bills to create another Bank of the United States. The bill of impeachment did not pass in the House of Representatives, but if it had, again the President Pro Tempore would have become President.