by Dan Donovan
Where will America go from here? What will be the impact on the approaching Presidential campaign of 2012? The answers will depend on the American people. In times of crisis Americans have always responded to stand in defense of their homeland. The hard job has always been getting them to their feet in the first place. Affairs of State seem remote to the average person in this country. If all politics is local, the locals too often don’t seem to care. Until the barbarians (or the usurpers, or the instigators, or the tax man) are literally at the gate, Joe and Betty America are willing to leave politics to someone who doesn’t have a real life.
Yet there is hope. The 2010 election campaign seemed to awaken in voters the realization that what goes on in politics and government does matter to the real lives of ordinary people. It can no longer be a case of leave a dirty business to those willing to wallow in mud. Whether or not the public’s attention will remained focused on issues of integrity and leadership will be one of the guiding factors in the fifty-seventh Presidential election of this Republic.
The actual wording of Section 4 of the
25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the Executive department or such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the Executive department or such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after the receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by a two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.