Topic in The West Wing for Today's World
The Twenty-Fifth Amendment
2001-2022 | 21 years
Twenty Five
In this heart-wrenching arc of The West Wing, The President’s youngest daughter, Zoe Bartlet, has been kidnapped. In this episode, the West Wing is in Chaos as they search for Zoe, not knowing where she is, who took her, or if they are under attack.
President Bartlet takes the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to remove himself from office so that he is not put in a position where he can be blackmailed.
What makes this especially interesting is that because his Vice President John Hoynes had resigned recently, so the power of The Presidency went to The Speaker of the House, Glen Allen Walken.
At the time this episode came out, this story probably seemed a bit of a stretch for a show that was meant to be realistic fiction. However in all that has happened recently, it has been made much more possible for a situation like that in the episode to occur.
Through the January 6th Hearings, we learned that a “confidential informant in the Proud Boys [extremist group] told the FBI the Proud Boys would have killed Mike Pence if given a chance.” In fact, some in the mob were chanting “Hang Mike Pence”, and they erected gallows outside.
During the hearings, it was also revealed the mob was “approximately 40 feet” from The Vice President.
It is very possible things could have gone south that day.
The House also passed a resolution shortly after the 6th for The Vice President to invoke the 25th amendment. And on Tuesday, during the hearings it was revealed, that “the committee has learned, that after the attack on the US Capitol, this [the 25th Amendment] was being discussed by members of President Trump's cabinet, as a way of stripping the full power of the presidency from Donald Trump.”
We could have been through the same situation that happened in The West Wing; If the Vice President had been killed by the mob, and the 25th amendment had been invoked, removing then President Trump from office, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, would have been made President of the United States in a Republican Administration.
President Bartlet said in 20 Hours in America (2), “I like to think about the road not taken.”
The road not taken could have been similar to the road this episode of The West Wing takes, with The Speaker of the House, who is in the opposite political party as The President, taking the power of The Presidency.
In the fallout after this episode, the country has to deal with a lot of negative effects from this situation (such as a possible recession). Do we want to keep empowering people who bring us close to these situations we like to imagine could only happen in fiction?
"...what good is an ally if their citizens are
capable of waging war on their own?"
-Admiral Fitzwallace
"Leo, the people you just named don't have the legal authority to stop me from doing certain things and some of them would go to jail if they didn't follow my orders. Very quietly, I want you to assemble the Cabinet. I want you to call the Speaker of the House."
-President Bartlet
"He's invoking the 25th Amendment. He's invoking twenty-five."
-Leo
"It doesn't say, 'I can't handle this?''
"It says, 'I AM handling this.'"
-Josh and Toby
Let's Learn More
This episode of The West Wing is an especially great one for people who want to learn more about the American government. We learn a lot about the Twenty-Fifth amendment and Line of Succession in this episode, so I will delve deeper for those who have been inspired to learn more.
The 25th Amendment was passed in 1967, shortly after (and largely because) President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, and is broken up into four sections.
The first says The Vice President becomes President if The President dies or resigns. The second allows the President to fill a vacancy of a Vice President with a majority confirmation in both the house and the senate. Section 3 allows what President Bartlet did in The West Wing, where he transmits a written declaration saying he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, making the Vice President Acting President until he transmits another letter to the contrary. This is the most often used form, and often happens when Presidents have things such as surgery(this comes up during In the Shadow of Two Gunmen). The fourth section is the most intricate, but basically allows the Vice President and the cabinet, or The Vice President and Congress, to make the Vice President Acting President. This is what was close to actually happening during and after January 6th.
You might be wondering how it is then that the Speaker of the House would become President. Well, this is where the line of succession comes in.
The line of succession is the ordered list of people who would assume the duties of The President if need be. The order comes from The Constitution and the Presidential Succession Act of 1947. The Speaker of the House is next in line behind the Vice President, so if something happened to both The President and the Vice President, The Speaker of the House would assume the president’s duties.
This is why during events such as the State of the Union, one cabinet member is left behind as the 'designated survivor', in case something happens at said event, so someone could take up the duties of the presidency. (This idea has caused the creation of political thrillers such as Designated Survivor.)
One last thing to note, as is pointed out in the episode, it is illegal for someone to work for multiple branches of government due to separation of powers. So if The Speaker of the House or President Pro Tempore of the Senate had to take the office of the presidency, they would have to resign. Although annoying, this helps to maintain our democracy.