Alternate 25th Amendment.

The line of Presidential succession goes as follows: VP, Speaker of the House, President Pro Temp of the Senate, then the Sec. of State.
To my line of reasoning it makes more sense as follows: VP, Sec. of State, the various Sec. in the order of the posts creation, then the Speaker of the House, then the President Pro Temp. I think it makes more sense to elevate the cabinet members as they are all appointed by the executive, and this maintains the separation of the Executive and Legislative branches.
 
Not the point. The point was to make sure the legislative branch still had power and influence over the executive. In other words, the amendment (which, might I add, was creatred and passed by Congress) was just there to put the Executive in its place- that is, behind the legislature.

Also a point- the Speaker and Pres Pro Temp were elected, by at least some of the people, and placed in their high position by elected representatives of the folks who didn't vote for 'em. The cabinet (which wasn't, for a long time, an official body, more an unofficial collection of executive department heads) are appointed by the President. The Speaker and Pro Temp, therefore, are more elected to leadership than the cabinet.

Third- it was tradition. The order for the first four had been decided for many years, and was used once (look up David Rice Atchison) in the past. It may have been unofficial, but it still existed.

Fourth- the new Cabinet secretaries are now just added to the end of the list, so the legislature can't be pushed back until there's so many Cabinet members, even a nuclear war wouldn't be enough to get an elected person into office.
 
Third- it was tradition. The order for the first four had been decided for many years, and was used once (look up David Rice Atchison) in the past. It may have been unofficial, but it still existed.

Secretary of State was third for around seventy years.

Wiki said:
This was passed in 1886. Congress replaced the President pro tempore and Speaker with officers of the President's Cabinet with the Secretary of State first in line. In the first 100 years of the United States, six former Secretaries of State had gone on to be elected President, while only two Congressional leaders had advanced to that office. As a result, shuffling the order of the line of succession seemed reasonable.

The Presidential Succession Act of 1947, signed into law by President Harry Truman, added the Speaker of the House and President pro tempore back in the line, but switched the two from the 1792 order. It remains the sequence used today.

It's quite reasonable the the 1886 law remains in force or that Truman keeps the Secretary of State third and then Speaker --> President pro tempore.
 
Secretary of State was third for around seventy years.



It's quite reasonable the the 1886 law remains in force or that Truman keeps the Secretary of State third and then Speaker --> President pro tempore.
Okay. But my earlier points still stand, primarily the one about this being an act that passes through Congress. Being Congress, they have the will to limit executive power as much as they possibly can. And even if the SecState stays third, the only time it has any bearing is that occasion a few years ago when Reagan's SecState made that little foul-up in his ordering after Reagan was shot.

Not that I don't think it's possible; you're certainly correct. But given my above points, I believe it more likely that the OTL result, or something closer to it, is rather more probable, and even if it changes, it doesn't affect anything.
 
I agree that that the Sec of State makes more sense than the Speaker as successor in the event of a vacancy for Pres and VP at the same time.

However although the 25th Amendment makes provision for dealing with Presidential Incapacity and the appointment of a new VP in the event of a vacancy the provision for succession beyond the VP is a matter for ordinary legislation. I believe that an Act of 1947 put the Speaker in the position of being next in line.
 

burmafrd

Banned
It was a move by Congress to spite the executive branch. Since the President is voted on by ALL the people, and its HIS policies that are supposed to be followed, it should fall on people appointed by him AND APPROVED BY THE SENATE(kind of forgot about that, didn't you).
 
It was a move by Congress to spite the executive branch. Since the President is voted on by ALL the people, and its HIS policies that are supposed to be followed, it should fall on people appointed by him AND APPROVED BY THE SENATE(kind of forgot about that, didn't you).

I don't have a proper book source on me, but History.com disagrees with you:

In 1945, then-Vice President Truman assumed the presidency after Franklin Roosevelt died of a stroke during his fourth term. As president, Truman advanced the view that the speaker of the house, as an elected official, should be next in line to be president after the vice president. On July 18, 1947, he signed an act that resurrected the original 1792 law, but placed the speaker ahead of the Senate president pro tempore in the hierarchy. Truman’s critics at the time claimed that the president did so because he had a close friendship with then-Speaker Sam Rayburn, and a less congenial relationship with Kenneth McKellar, the president pro tempore.
 
Surely the Speaker of the House in July 1947 was a Republican- the Republican triumph in the 1946 mid term elections is quite famous.
 
Surely the Speaker of the House in July 1947 was a Republican- the Republican triumph in the 1946 mid term elections is quite famous.

True, Rayburn's first term was from 16 September 1940 to 3 January, 1947 but one imagines Truman starts the process towards the '47 law sometime in '46 before the midterm defeat.
 
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