Heading Into Bomb Everything Day

Welp, there goes Easter this year.

I had to check but yes this is real

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— Anna Bower (@annabower.bsky.social) April 5, 2026 at 8:27 AM

Just in case the Bluesky skeet disappears, here's a saved photo

It's been said that when people drop curse words, they tend to be more honest about what they're saying. In that moment, their frustration and rage make it harder to be civil - there's no filter for polite conversation - and they speak blunt about their intentions.

With trump - a person notorious for lying nearly every time he opens his mouth - this exposes his frustration and rage all right. Also his bullying and viciousness. Also his willingness to commit war crimes to win a fight he shouldn't have started and arguably can't finish.

I'm seeing the usual calls from the sane side of the political spectrum that now would be a good time for the people in a position to do something - 25th Amendment time! - about removing trump from the big chair even if it's only temporary. That his madness and his dementia are getting too obvious to ignore.

But I saw this coming the last time around. Nobody in trump's Cabinet or Joint Chiefs or in a Republican-controlled Congress is going to invoke the 25th to stop this shit. None of them have the nation's best interests at heart, only their own.

There's a possibility by Tuesday some people in trump's orbit may talk him out of a massive war-crime bombing campaign. But trump has been escalating his threats even after he backs off (aka TACO or Trump Always Chickens Out), and it's been clear for weeks now that if he can't get the Strait opened sooner rather than later the global economy will collapse... and he'll get the blame no matter how much gaslighting he and his wingnut media allies try to use.

The odds of trump making this a long drawn-out war just got worse.

We're screwed. 

What If: When THAT Happens

There's an old joke, no one is sure of the origins other than it came about during the early days of daily newspaper publishing. Thing is, Franklin D. Roosevelt reportedly told this joke a lot during his tenure as President, so it's attributed to him:

A kid starts working Monday at a newsstand, where he meets a businessman who comes up, buys the morning paper, glances at the headline, then tosses the paper down in anger. That businessman keeps coming back all week doing the same: buys the morning paper, looks at the headline, tosses the paper away. On Friday, the kid asks the businessman when he approaches "Hey mister, why do you buy the paper only to throw it away?"

The businessman answers "I'm looking for the obituary."

The kid replies "Well mister, the obituaries are on the back pages."

To which the businessman snarls "Kid, when the son of a bitch I'm waiting for dies, it'll be on the front page!"

It's a joke I think of often, especially in this day and age because, well...

It's not like anyone is openly writing about it, other than the occasional news report of You Know Who showing signs of physical injury or illness, like recently (via Digby):

His doctor just said he was using a cream on his neck without announcing that he has shingles. But that’s almost certainly what he has. I had them in the same place. Combined with the stress and his age, he’s not feeling well at all. That can’t be good for the world.

There's been a lot of talk on social media, about the bruised hands, the increased signs of dementia, the inability to stay awake, etc. But nobody wants to say it too much too loudly (mostly because nobody wants to jinx it), but among a lot of the non-MAGA people this particular thought is now out there: "I can't wait for IT to happen."

Even the McSweeney's site doesn't exactly spell it out, but you don't need to read between the lines:

It’s impossible to say when IT will HAPPEN. But it can’t be too long until IT HAPPENS. Looking at the data (age, high-stress job, cardiac history), it is statistically plausible that IT will HAPPEN in the next thirty-six months.

Eighteen, if you factor in hamburger consumption and all the weird bruising.

Of course, it doesn’t feel right to want IT to HAPPEN. And it’s obviously not okay to try to make IT HAPPEN. That’s not what this is ABOUT, just to make things CLEAR LEGALLY as far as VARIOUS AGENCIES are concerned.

But regardless, IT is going to HAPPEN. So you’re allowed to think about IT...

When IT HAPPENS, it will probably be FEELING. Just a huge, overwhelming sense of FEELING, the kind where you didn’t even realize how starved you were for FEELING. Punctuated with alternating waves of SECOND FEELING, as well as SENSATION.

Plus, a sudden absence of THIRD FEELING, which makes you realize the toll of A CONSTANT BASELINE OF LOW-GRADE THIRD FEELING for ten goddamn TIME PERIODS straight, even though you were still plenty aware of THIRD FEELING, trust me...

For all the spiritual and emotional catharsis the event could be, for all the whispered wishes every time every American to the Left of the John Birchers prays at night... what WOULD really happen when IT happens?

Well, the simplest answer to that is the 25th Amendment will kick in, and Vice President JD Vance will get sworn in as President and take over the reins of the White House. It will be done within minutes, maybe an hour or two just to make sure You Know Who is officially an ex-shitgibbon. 

After that, chaos will prevail as the entire Far Right ecosystem between the wingnut media, the wingnut preachers, the wingnut congresscritters, and a handful of guys named Dave begin to fight each other over the rotting corpse of trump's MAGA empire.

For starters: While Vance is going to be in prime position to claim the mantle of MAGA leadership, he's not exactly well-liked even among the Republican base. He's relatively new to politics and doesn't have the network in place within the party ranks to seize control. Above all, he really doesn't have anyone he can trust to help corral a fracturing coalition that will fracture because others will scheme in the backrooms to undercut Vance and seize the MAGA crown for themselves.

Even within trump's Cabinet, there at least two people - Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth - who could challenge Vance for leadership of that rabid MAGA base. Rubio in particular has sold himself as the future of the Republican Party ever since 2010 when he got elected Senator, and happily marketed by the Beltway punditry as the GOP Savior... only to get undercut by trump's rise to power in 2016. If Rubio has any presidential ambitions still in him, he has to known his window of opportunity is closing soon, and having that unpopular Vance blocking his way isn't going to help him.

Granted, in this scenario Vance will likely purge the Cabinet of anyone he thinks will work against him, which likely kicks Rubio out of State and out of any position to sabotage whatever bankrupt foreign policy our nation has left. That could give Rubio the chance to play spoiler for party leadership on the outside, criticizing any miscues Vance would likely commit in office, and primary challenge Vance for 2028. Thing is, in modern presidential politics it's been rare to challenge an incumbent let alone beat them, so there's no guarantee for Rubio to win that way (the best possibility is that early primarying exposes Vance and he declines to run for re-election like Truman and LBJ. But in that scenario the GOP primaries become wide open for another crazy field of multiple candidates).

Any "What If" guessing about a post-trump aftermath relies on one key question: How will that rabid Far Right MAGA base react to losing their golden idol trump? It depends a lot on whomever among the Republican leadership that voter base would see as the worthy successor... which becomes its own problem. There isn't anyone that the MAGAts seem to respect as a future standard bearer: Not Vance, not Rubio, not either of trump's kids with political ambitions (junior and that other guy). There are other hardline panderers among the GOP ranks that *could* appeal; but some of them - Marjorie Taylor Greene comes to mind - have turned against trump publicly and could be hurting their own standing, or others like Rick "Medicare Fraud" Scott or Jim "Sex Scandal" Jordan who have alienated other party leaders to where a schism in Congress is unavoidable.

This is the thing about trump's devoted followers: They are more devoted to HIM than to the Republican Party itself. Given opportunities to change their support to other political figures, they refuse. We saw this in the 2024 primaries even with trump facing a number of criminal and civil charges (and convictions) that normally would make a candidate vulnerable: The likes of Ron DeSantis did his best to "own the libs" the way trump did, only to get rejected hard because the Real Thing was still available and the MAGA base did not want to abandon trump.

I've railed about this before: trump habitually, constantly violated social and political norms and yet kept gaining more voter support. he defied political gravity every time a scandal would have ruined anyone else. Of all of trump's business failings, he is good at one thing: Marketing himself. he wields a horrifying and dark charisma that claimed dominion over a section of the American population - the haters, the fearmongers, the grifters - that no else can reach.

trump is shameless, in a way nearly every other person on the planet isn't. A lot of politicians know how to appeal, how to pander, how to demagogue: None of them can sink themselves to the level of shamelessness trump can, which is why none of them can appeal to that MAGA base the way he does.

Vance tries to do it and gets mocked. DeSantis tried and failed. If Greene or other Far Right figures try to rise up and fill the vacuum of hate, they arguably won't be able to fill that void no matter how vile or vicious they behave. Because they run the risk - through self-awareness, through hesitation or moderation to keep themselves even vaguely human - of succumbing to political gravity where trump never fell.

As for the fracturing nature of the Republican Party itself: trump has made himself so indispensable to the party's organization and survival that there is a genuine possibility the GOP will fracture once he's gone. Again, we could see a civil war between the various trump wannabes rising up to pander to the rabid Far Right base for the 2028 presidency. But we could also witness a Republican Party falling apart between the various factions that are torn between keeping our international prestige high (and stopping Russian / Chinese hegemony from taking our top spot), keeping our business overlords happy (by ending trump's disastrous tariff wars), or pandering to an "America First" mob base that also wants a Christian Nationalist war against the heathens to bring about the End of Days.

A lot of that remains speculation. When - IF - THAT happens, we'll have to see what actually plays out.

Something we should prepare for when THAT happens is the likelihood of trump's devoted base going on the warpath. trump has called often at his rallies for his supporters to act out and attack others. We've seen what happened on January 6th, in spite of the MAGA faithful trying to whitewash / excuse the horrors of that riot. This isn't speculation: there is genuine fear if/when trump dies, his base will react with fire and fury.

We can look to how the Far Right reacted after the assassination of one of their media elites Charlie Kirk. The conservative punditry tried to turn Kirk into a Free Speech saint - ignoring all the hate speech he promoted and the colleges he attempted to censor - and attacked anyone on social media they viewed as dishonoring Kirk's memory. They actively got people fired from jobs for their own free speech rights, and a number of people and institutions were harassed with death threats.

At the same time, that same conservative punditry turned on each other trying to make themselves into Kirk's heir to his conservative empire. The likes of Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes, and Ben Shapiro pulled out the knives to backstab each other to claim the audience and financial base for their own. Owens in particular has gone after Charlie's widow Erika, who's been using the martyrdom to rise to political power on her own. Some of the rancor is over the growing anti-Semitism driving the Far Right rage conflicting with the public necessity of siding with Israel in the Middle East chaos going on right now. But a lot of it is really about who gets to be the next Trump - the role Charlie Kirk was growing into - and profiting from it all when trump himself kicks the bucket.

The unity we see in the modern Republican Party - the Far Right Conservative movement as a whole - really only exists as a money-making machine for those at the top who can profit from the graft, the insider trading, the kickbacks, the marketing of hats and t-shirts, the influence peddling, and open bribes. All of it led by the Grifter-in-Chief trump who's trying to squeeze every nickel he can (pennies are phased out, by the way) before he has to answer to a wrathful deity.

And that's the thing. A lot of the corruption trump is pulling right now - and a lot of the half-baked foreign and domestic policy debacles he keeps inflicting upon himself - shows all the trademarks of a con artist half-aware he's running out of time (look at how desperate trump is to see that hideous ballroom of his finished). His end is coming, and Judgment cometh right soon.

It's going to be a question of surviving the chaos that follows.

Crooks Or Cowards? In the Age of trump for Republicans It Is Both

There was a bombshell today when the New York Times - still the "official paper" of record despite their many sins against journalism - issued an Op-Ed written by "A Senior Official within trump's White House," arguably someone within the inner circle (or on the Orient Express train during a snowstorm, if you want the list of suspects figured out) venting about the damage control the "sane" Republicans have had to do since Day One of the Shitgibbon Era.

To refer to the sanity patrol like Cheryl Rofer over at Balloon-Juice:

While I take a measure of relief that we now appear to be closer to the beginning of the end than to the end of the beginning, I have some big concerns about that New York Times op-ed by “a senior administration official.”

My concerns are very much like David Frum’s...

But the author is trying to preserve his/her reputation: I am being a good Republican, helping to execute good Republican policies. I am keeping the country safe from a dangerous president.

That’s a lot of responsibility to take on. The president is elected; the author has been appointed by that president and tells us that he is undermining that president. In the telling, the president is further undermined.

What did the author expect to be the next step? Donald Trump is reported to have freaked out over the Woodward revelations and have started searching for the leakers. This will turbocharge that search. James Jesus Angleton became convinced that there was a Russian mole in the CIA and practically destroyed the agency. Can the author of the op-ed protect us from a storm a couple of categories stronger..?

I'm with Cheryl on this regarding the Cover-Your-Ass aspect of this article: The person writing it is not doing so out of concern for the nation's well-being, it's a signal to other Republicans that there are people in trump's White House making sure the madman doesn't go on a Nuke Tirade. This isn't serving the Republic: This is protecting the Republicans.

While the Handlers in the West Wing keep trump under control (barely), the Republicans in Congress can happily continue their own agendas of tax cuts, filling judicial seats with arch-conservatives who can serve for another 30-40 years, and suppressing voters rights to ensure gerrymandered control of the House for another decade. Neither the House nor the Senate ever have to fear facing the political consequences of doing SOMETHING to investigate trump with their oversight powers.

This is where the cowardice of the Republicans hiding in the shadows become criminal. The Republicans indulge as crooks with unearned and unjustified political power they do not deserve to wield. Like all crooks, they're taking for themselves and leaving the suckers (U.S. voters) in the dust.

And in this cowardice they are committing the greatest crime of all: violating their Oaths of Office to serve the public trust and save us from unfit leaders.

Referring to Frum's article in The Atlantic:

If the president’s closest advisers believe that he is morally and intellectually unfit for his high office, they have a duty to do their utmost to remove him from it, by the lawful means at hand. That duty may be risky to their careers in government or afterward. But on their first day at work, they swore an oath to defend the Constitution—and there were no “riskiness” exemptions in the text of that oath.

But what the author has just done is throw the government of the United States into even more dangerous turmoil. He or she has enflamed the paranoia of the president and empowered the president’s willfulness.

What happens the next time a staffer seeks to dissuade the president from, say, purging the Justice Department to shut down the Mueller investigation? The author of the Times op-ed has explicitly told the president that those who offer such advice do not have the president’s best interests at heart, and are, in fact, actively subverting his best interests as he understands them on behalf of ideas of their own.

He’ll grow more defiant, more reckless, more anti-constitutional, and more dangerous...

There is an honest debate right now if that was the writer's intent: Force trump into a rash action, create a crisis beyond anyone's control...

What would be better?

Speak in your own name. Resign in a way that will count. Present the evidence that will justify an invocation of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, or an impeachment, or at the very least, the first necessary step toward either outcome, a Democratic Congress after the November elections...

Until a Republican leader - one with genuine gravitas and political power that can withstand the ruthless attacks of the trump voter base that is bound to hit him - steps up like that and FINALLY calls out not just trump but every GODDAMN ENABLER responsible for the disaster we are now in, this is not going to help.

For all the times I dreaded a full meltdown and never really got one, I think this time... this is it.

GODS HELP US.

trump Thinks He Can Rule For Life. He Is Wrong AGAIN In So Many Different Ways

So this popped up last night on my Twitter feed (via Brian Stelter):

Insert hour-long screaming here.

This shouldn't be surprising. trump has talked about wanting to be a dictator well before 2015, and his admiration for the likes of Putin and Philippines President Duterte are on the record.

It's just never a good thing to read about trump. The threat of Cadet Bone Spurs staying in the White House well past his welcome would drive a teetotaler like me back to another attempt at drinking hard cider.

So, as the morning rises and I've had a chance to step back and assess the situation, how dire and real a threat is this?

Right off the bat, we need to point at the 22nd Amendment and go "Thank God Republicans HATED FDR That Much."

That part of the Constitution is turning out to be a life-saver. By capping Presidential terms to two, it forces a would-be dictator hoping to rule forever to vacate in 8 years no matter what. Granted, the amendment doesn't remove the guy from ALL power - trump could arguably go from a two-term stint to running for the US Senate and retaining control on a puppet front-man - but the system of checks and balances in place would severely crimp any attempt to rule from behind the curtains.

If trump wants to rule forever, he either has to get the 22nd Amendment abolished with a new amendment or ignore it altogether.

I've mentioned elsewhere, passing any amendment is tougher than expected. You need either a Constitutional Convention - unlikely, as both parties in Congress are terrified of how uncontrollable such a thing is - or you need two-thirds of BOTH Houses of Congress PLUS two-thirds (I think 38) of the states to approve it.

If trump thinks both Congress and the states will do this deed for him, he's beyond delusional and pretty much insane. By example, there was talk of repealing the 22nd for Ronald Reagan, who was popular enough among the voting base and across enough states to make it a feasible effort. There is no goddamn way trump is as popular as Reagan ever was. If trump tries to make this push, he is not going to find enough votes even among Republican Congresscritters (despite their fears of their own party base). And even state legislatures controlled by Republicans would recoil by the obvious move towards dictatorship this will be.

That means trump would have to ignore the amendment outright (or suspend all elections for as long as he can). This would be so unconstitutional a move - so much in violation of the Oath of Office to "faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of (his) ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" - that the entire federal government should fall apart in opposition to him.

For trump to pull this off, he'd have to have the entire military on his side. While a President does serve as Commander-in-Chief, the military is not directly loyal to the President but instead to the Constitution. They have rules allowing them to refuse to follow any order they view as "illegal or in violation of" the Constitution. I do not think any of the Joint Chiefs - the heads of each military branch - owe trump any favors, especially something on this scale.

trump certainly won't have the Will of the People backing him either. he remains one of the most deeply unpopular (HATED) Presidents in modern polling. trump may have the support of the Far Right voting base - and definitely among the Neo-Nazis and racists he caters to - but those number in the thousands not millions. 62 million people may have voted for him, but a lot of them held their noses to do it (hating Hillary more at that moment). I would argue enough of them did not vote for him to become a dictator to rule outside of the law: If he tries this we would see a mass exodus of Republican voters from the party that would wreck its electoral chances far beyond any gerrymandering or vote-rigging the party could try.

trump's attempt would cause a schism among the states themselves. Solid Blue states like New York and California would declare his presidency illegal. Solid Red states would support him, but a number of them might not because even their local political ranks would fear the implications (trump would ignore the system of dividing powers between the states and the federal governments).

If trump tries to become Dictator-For-Life, he would have to do with a dwindling support staff. Not only is he losing people to Mueller's criminal probes into his 2016 campaign, Mueller is also digging into all of trump's business dealings now (pursuing just how deep Russia's ties to trump already were during that campaign) meaning trump's own family and his own financial base are threatened. Anybody who helped trump during 2016 is not going to be there to help him run in 2020 if he even tries for a second term: They certainly are not there to help him plan a coup.

On top of that, his administrative attrition is happening at a pace faster than any previous administration: he's not keeping anybody on long enough for them to learn the ropes, and he's failing at attracting the best and the brightest among even Republican supporters to fill major vacancies (nobody who's serious about a political career wants to work for him). A move of this scale requires a team of a large enough scale and political pull to clamp down on all threats, solve all contingencies, steamroll over any opposition. trump's West Wing can't even figure out the goddamn light switches, and he's down to maybe, what, thirty-one staffers in a White House that needs about three-hundred?

The only ones on the entire planet who would want trump to make himself Dictator are the nations who know his move would shatter us: Putin in particular would revel in the collapse of the world's most visible democratic republic. China and half the Middle East would kick back and pop the champagne bottles as well. However, I doubt any of them would actively involve themselves in such an attempt. Even Putin would rather sit on the sidelines and let us decimate ourselves, without the risk of committing resources that could compromise or trouble him. If trump thinks his buddy Vlad will help out, he better expect the only thing for the Russians to do is pat trump on the back and tell him "you go girl."

In short: trump has no political clout or muscle to pull this off. he could try, but it would be his final move.

It would be a messy one. trump could get some supporters in Congress to back him, but it would likely drive any remaining Centrist/Moderate Republicans out of the Party into a third party to oppose him. trump could get some of the military troops - the covert racists among the ranks - and a handful of officers buying into the wingnut mythos, but not enough of the high-ranking officers to make a coup attempt stick. trump could get local law enforcement to back him, but most of them are only in a position to uphold laws at their level (and city/county governments may not want to get involved either way).

The worst part would be the Far Right militia crowd who would rally to trump's effort to become dictator, who would lash out not at the federal government but at their local communities much like the SA Brownshirts would smash their way across 1930s Germany. Those militia may number about 50,000 or so hard-core members, but that would be just enough - and spread across enough states - to cause serious damage to millions of innocent American lives.

If trump tries to make himself Dictator, we will be deep into our Second Civil War, bloody and messy and leaving the United States tattered perhaps beyond repair.

Hurry up, Mueller. Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

It's Not Going To End Well

There are more and more stories about the trump regime that signals an administration in crisis. With that, I have been seeing more and more stories about how trump's tenure as President Loser of the Popular Vote will end.

None of the options are particularly nice or safe, but let's consider:

The obvious way trump's tenure ends is through the Mueller Special Counsel investigation into whether Russia interfered in the 2016 Elections. Consider how a lot of legal experts and political think tanks - such as the Brookings people - note the likelihood trump Obstructed that ongoing FBI investigation. Just on that alone, trump could be facing criminal charges (and in a sane world, an angry Congress removing him via impeachment).

Thing is, Mueller is finding more and more how trump's campaign - including trump's own sons and son-in-law - interacted with Russian agents, Russian businessmen with ties to Putin, and how Putin gave orders to interfere with the election. The odds are good - not a 100 percent lock, but it's high - that enough people in trump's inner circle are facing criminal charges over this: Which increases the odds that just one of them will flip, breaking trump's entire con game, meaning other nasty secrets come out that would end with trump in handcuffs or impeached.

The impeachment process requires one thing, however: A Republican-controlled Congress willing to put their collective ass on the line to impeach someone from their own party. No matter how or what the GOP leadership tells themselves, trump is insanely popular with the Republican base. Attack him right now and a majority of sitting incumbents will find themselves kicked out during the 2018 midterm primaries.

There remains a chance that trump's base support with wither in the face of actual criminal findings: but considering how every single scandal that would have destroyed other campaigns never hurt trump, this isn't a given. So expecting the Republican leadership to grow a spine when Mueller presents his finding is a fool's hope.

The other likely end is with trump's handlers finally having enough with the chaos and stupidity. The ongoing reports of behind-the-scenes freakouts by trump and the stressful responses by his Chief of Staff and key Cabinet Secretaries are fueling suggestions in the media about the 25th Amendment.

I've mused about this before... and it's taken this long for the mainstream media to get to where I was back in January. Sigh. Anyhoo. We're at a point where the provision in the 25th - Section 4, about the President being "incapacitated" or unable to perform his duties - is applicable (via that Vanity Fair article):

...The conversation among some of the president’s longtime confidantes, along with the character of some of the leaks emerging from the White House has shifted. There’s a new level of concern. NBC News published a report that Trump shocked his national security team when he called for a nearly tenfold increase in the country’s nuclear arsenal during a briefing this summer. One Trump adviser confirmed to me it was after this meeting disbanded that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called Trump a “moron.”

...One former official even speculated that (Chief of Staff) Kelly and Secretary of Defense James Mattis have discussed what they would do in the event Trump ordered a nuclear first strike. “Would they tackle him?” the person said...

Granted, there isn't anything specific in the amendment that spells out the definition of "unable to discharge his duties", but the lack of focus from the Oval Office has to fit. The reports of how Kelly is trying to isolate trump from trump's more reckless advisors and wingnut news sources... The fact that former generals like Kelly and Mattis have to consider cutting trump's access to the Nuclear Football (that they might, Gods help us, have to physically restrain him)... the evidence of trump's own behavior and decision-making that fall into legitimate concerns about dementia or psychosis.

Let's put it this way: trump's handlers treat him like a 5-year-old. Considering the Constitutional requirement to serve as President is that you be 35 years or older, trump is emotionally and intellectually unqualified to serve.

This move - using an amendment to force a sitting President Loser of the Popular Vote out of that office - also requires courage from a Republican Party lacking in said courage. While some in the Cabinet - Kelly, Mattis, Tillerson - are clearly exasperated and likely at the point of "fuck it," the other Secretaries - needed to sign off on the office notice - would have to go all in on the move. Enough of them either do not feel the pressure (yet) to care, or even profit from trump's chaos. We're not at a point (yet) where the Cabinet would be forced to act. It would have to be trump ordering a first strike - either at Korea or Iran or Guam or Puerto Rico - to get them to act.

The attempt would also require backing from Congress - as they have to accept the notice of removal per the amendment - and there are no signs that Speaker Ryan or Majority Leader McConnell are keen to support trump's removal (even if they are exasperated with trump's failings as well).

I doubt the military or intel agencies would raise a fuss if trump were removed. If you consider Mattis and Kelly are ex-generals trying to maintain control, there's probably a lot of sympathy among the ranks who share those backgrounds and would accept it as long as it was a legal transfer to civilian control with Pence taking over. I'd wager the NSA, CIA and FBI ranks for the most part would love to see this walking security risk in trump lose all access to stuff they don't want going to Putin.

The risks of this move will come from outside the military/executive Establishment. trump supporters - especially the Far Right media - would view the use of the 25th Amendment as a political coup. These factions would likely take their anger - already at a boiling point - out on Congressional Republicans (again, a reason why Ryan and McConnell won't back it).

There's also the likelihood the trump base could explode into violence: some of the more outrageous outliers in the wingnut media are talking about rising up if trump were removed from office. This has to be taken seriously when you consider trump's supporters include the KKK, Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, and other fringe groups known for violence.

We'd be talking about something akin to the 1960s. It won't get as bad as the American Civil War - probably the closest we're at right now in terms of a divided nation - if only because a majority of Americans are not that violent. The wingnuts hoping for an actual war are going to get disappointed when they get only ten or twenty people to show up for their revolution - I kid, the actual number might be 20,000 - and they're facing about 500,000 National Guard troops and 400,000 US Army troops and 300,000 Air Force personnel (and if they're really stupid about getting on boats, they'll face at least 10 Navy aircraft carrier fleets and 180,000 Marines). There might be a civil war but the heavy part of it might be over inside of, oh, a week.

While those numbers might be a mis-match, the caveat is this: All it will take is one wingnut with enough military firepower to take out a school or shopping mall or public gathering to make it bloody for enough Americans to suffer for their rage.

The only other scenario of trump's removal is being voted out in 2020. This is highly likely because 1) even trump supporters can't keep him above 30 percent approval until then, 2) trump's habit of alienating everybody will break the Republican Party well enough that a third party WILL RISE up to pull away enough votes to let Democrats win (in 2018 no less), 3)

The only problem with THAT scenario is, obviously, that's still three years down the road. Can the United States survive three more years of this chaos, this illegality, this bullying and discord by trump's own command?

Either way, we're not going to like the end results.

Article Two Section Four, or The Twenty-Fifth...

So I keep seeing all this talk about impeachment. Donald Trump's not even sworn in yet and there's people gaming out how removing Trump for his ongoing unethical behavior (via Digby):

There are some creative strategic thinkers out there, however, who are looking at the big picture and coming up with some exciting propositions. For instance, Robert Kuttner wrote this provocative piece for the Huffington Post, advocating for a group of experts, preferably bipartisan, to begin seriously putting together the case for impeachment...

He goes on to enumerate the high crimes and misdemeanors in which Trump is already implicated, beginning with the massive corruption inherent in his continued ownership of a privately held international company, the details of which he refuses to divulge. There are also his strange and uncharacteristic fondness for Vladimir Putin and his untrammeled nepotism, just for starters...

I have to admit, I dreaded the I-Word during the Obama years because I've seen the use of impeachment as a political, partisan tool in my lifetime (Clinton) and I was too young to witness impeachment under honest circumstances (Nixon's crimes in office, not just the Watergate cover-up but several others). I feared with each passing year - especially after 2010 and 2014 Midterms - that the Republicans would just break out the Impeach hammer and cudgel Obama with it until they drew blood.

But even Obama didn't get this kind of treatment back in 2009 - the Republicans preferred their Obstructionist gameplan instead - so I'm a little bothered that the Democrats and the Progressive Left are reaching for this tool before Day One even gets here.

Then again, Obama was never this big a goddamn glitch in the political Matrix.

Trump is coming in with so many conflicts of interest with his business holdings that he's honestly violating the Emoluments Clause the second he puts his hand to a Bible (which will likely burst into flames when he does).

Trump's alliance with Russian political and business figures - and his open devotion to autocrat Putin - is where he's valuing their friendship over the national security of the United States he's supposed to uphold and defend. Using the word "treason" describing this behavior isn't hyperbole or partisan wishful thinking...

Trump's ignorance and refusal to learn the rules and protocols of the Office of the President - especially in dealing with foreign powers - is 100 percent certain to cause a Constitutional Crisis. It's only a question of When and How it happens.

Just any ONE of those three points would be legitimate grounds - treason, bribery, other high crimes and misdemeanors as mentioned in Article II Section 4 - for impeaching...

It just comes down to a question of political will.

Like it or not impeachment is a political tool, not a legal one. For impeachment to happen, your political party in charge of Congress has to find it in themselves to go against their own party's leadership AND voting base. This is what happened to Nixon: as his crimes became more public, his Republican allies in the Senate had more reason to turn against him.

Trump, for all his unpopularity with the nation, still has his fans among the voting base of the GOP... and they've made it clear more than once they'll side with him instead of the party. The party leadership also has learned their lessons from the Watergate fallout (and it's the wrong lesson): stick together to defend the party at all hazards...

Trump is going to have to do something so vulgar, so crass, so criminal an act while President that the partisans in the House have no choice but to vote to impeach. And even then, there may not be enough practical or pragmatic Republicans in the House to pull it off: the wingnut Freedom Caucus could well split with the party on any situation, leaving the leadership without enough in-party votes. The numbers for this get worse when any impeachment moves to the Senate: To actually remove the impeached Trump requires a two-thirds vote of all Senators, and depending on the quorum rules that's 68 Senators. Right now, there's 52 Republican Senators.

What this means for both the House and the Senate to vote for impeachment: The Republican leadership in both wings of Congress are going to have to ask Democrats to join in the effort.

The Republicans might not want to go that far, even if they HAVE to. The Democrats may also be offended by whatever Trump does, and they will have every sane reason to kick a racist, sexist bankrupt fraud like Trump off the face of the Earth. Thing is, the Democrats are not going to do the Republicans in Congress any favors. They won't do this out of the goodness of their hearts (nor should they).

The Democrats - both in the House and in the Senate - are bound to insist on deals. They'll likely insist on protecting whatever's left of Obamacare (or bringing parts of it back). They'll likely insist on protecting Planned Parenthood. They'll likely insist on business regulations be put back into place. If the Dems were being sadistic, they'll likely insist on McConnell wearing a chicken suit on the floor of the Senate and publicly apologize to Obama for being an Obstructionist Asshole. Hell, the Dems will likely call for tax hikes on the rich - THE deal-breaker that no Republican will accept, so the Dems will only be asking for THIS trade-off if Trump does something really really evil...

This is why I don't think impeachment will ever happen. The Republicans would rather live with the horror and shame of whatever sins Trump does in office, if only because they'd rather never trade-off their wingnut agenda to get the Democrats to side with them on any real honest reason to impeach.

The Republicans would rather live with the low disapproval ratings and with their reputations for corruption and venality that will inflame the nation in the wake of Trump's disasters, if only because they're living with that terrible reputation now and are still in power. They'll gamble that they won't lose in 2018 or 2020 like they did in 2006 and 2008...

No, if there is any serious attempt to remove Trump from office, it's going to have to involve the 25th Amendment. Specifically, Section 4 of the 25th:

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of 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.

This is also known as the political coup option. It's where a faction within your own office can turn against you and remove your political authority as President. This can, granted, happen under any circumstance. Which is why it's a scary provision of the Amendment.

It hasn't happened yet because pulling it off is a great risk and a Constitutional crisis all its own. A Vice President has to be willing to sign off on taking power away from his/her boss, someone who has more political connections and has more popularity with your own party's base. Every member of the Cabinet (executive departments) and heads of intelligence agencies who signs off on this knows their political futures (and their lives) ride on a successful outcome. A move like this also has to involve the Joint Chiefs (Chair, Vice Chair, the heads of all four branches of the military plus the National Guard) otherwise you've got a military in chaos over who the Commander In Chief's gonna be. And both the Senate and the House has to accept what's happening.

Given the variances of party control throughout the decades since the 25th Amendment passed, there's never been a perfect alignment of factors to allow a Section 4 to take place. (When you come at the king, you best not miss)

Except Trump.

Given how dangerous Trump is regarding foreign affairs, his haphazard views on military use in global hotspots, his misunderstanding of our nation's nuclear weapon policies, and his coziness to Russia... if you asked the Joint Chiefs and the heads of the CIA, FBI and NSA to sign off on a Section 4 for Trump, they've probably already printed up engraved pens for this.

While Vice-President Elect Pence is only there because Trump picked him for the job, he doesn't owe Trump on this. Pence is a creature of the Republican Party, and has clear differences from Trump when it comes to World-View. (Given Trump's personal vulgar habits, a serious Far Right Christian like Pence likely abhors him in private) If it came down to invoking the 25th through Section 4, Pence will view it as a duty to the Party (and then... maybe the nation).

The one sticking point would be the Cabinet: enough of them have to sign off on this move. And I think - I am not sure, so if someone has the answer please confirm - there's a limit needed, like a simple majority of them. That means 8 out of 15 Secretaries have to concur with VP Pence and the Joint Chiefs/Intel heads. Which might explain why Trump has been selecting people with little or no political experience for those positions: He'll want people who owe him more than they owe the Party to be on his side if a Section 4 has to be invoked.

If the 25th Amendment removal does take place it only removes Trump from the day-to-day stuff, prevents him from signing or vetoing legislation, and it takes him out of the chain of command for any decisions that need making. Trump will still technically be President, and Pence will only be serving as Acting President (I doubt Pence could choose his own Veep during this, by the by). Trump might actually LIKE this arrangement, because then he doesn't get any of the headaches while believing he'll still get enough of the perks (and the media attention he thrives on).

He'll turn into the political equivalent of Thing That Would Not Leave.

Trump will then get a ton of pressure to "take the hint" and resign from office altogether. If he gets cut off from power via the 25th Amendment, it's likely going to be over something so egregious that nobody in Congress or the Executive branch (military) will trust him with that power again. Meaning they will never send that letter to Congress saying "all is well back to normal". But knowing Trump, he'll just as likely keep the title and remain a nuisance for Pence and the Republicans who "clearly betrayed" him, sticking around in the office not physically but spiritually, haunting the Pence regime that rises up, mocking anything and everything to keep his own voter base within the GOP angry towards their leadership as always.

This is also why the 25th Amendment scenario might not play out: The Republican leadership is well aware that if they boot Trump from power, their own party voting base will declare it an "unlawful coup" and turn against them. And the leadership has seen - hi, Eric Castor! - what happens when they do.

Again, it all depends on how serious a problem Trump becomes. It all depends on how DANGEROUS in office Trump becomes.

And this train wreck is oncoming. Nothing is stopping it. We all know it's going to happen.

It's just a question of When and How.

Just Saying, We Don't Need a Veep Anymore. Maybe a Senate Consul Would Do.

I came across this article today, and it was on a topic that has pushed my reformist mindset from time to time.

It was about how we go about choosing and voting for Vice Presidents all wrong. From Jeff Stein at Vox.com:

...But the way America chooses its vice presidents seems to give little weight to the gravity of the role. Presidential candidates pick their number two during the heat of a campaign, and the VPs often represent some short-term electoral interest far more than readiness for the job. As was very much the case this year, questions about the VP are far more likely to center on their impact on a swing state or on solidifying a crucial voting bloc than about experience and presidential mettle.

Stein goes into some of the same arguments I have about getting rid of the Vice Presidential pick altogether. He digs into the biggest problem of having a Vice President on the ticket: the Veep is chosen more for political or partisan considerations rather than actual competency. Stein mentions the biggest culprits in our history revolving around this: Andrew Johnson who was chosen to balance Lincoln's desire in 1864 to have a Southerner on the ticket to show a Unionist front (who ended up destroying any chance of a clean Reconstruction and led to 100-plus years of Jim Crow horrors); Sarah Palin who was chosen by McCain to energize support among the Republican faithful (and to try and coax more women voters away from Obama); and Chester A. Arthur who was chosen to bridge a divided Republican party between reformers and pro-Spoils factions (to be fair, Arthur responded to the crisis that brought him to office in 1881 by becoming a competent reformer himself).

As Stein notes: "(The) argument here isn’t just that an unqualified VP could become president despite not enjoying the support of much of the country. It’s that we explicitly look to vice presidents to complement the ideological profiles of the nominees, thereby intentionally inserting confusion into our government that could, potentially, be avoided under a different system."

Stein also points out that the current method of selection - that the President nominates the Vice President with little or no approval from the voters (the conventions are pretty much rubber-stamps now) - is relatively undemocratic.

His suggested reform - to have the President nominate the Vice President similar to a Cabinet position to have the Senate assent and vote - has its own troubling issues (would be impossible to implement if the Senate is held by the opposing party) that would stop it from working.

Vox doesn't seem to have a Comments section - in this day and age, that's not surprising - so I had to hunt down Stein's Twitter account and send him my suggested reform idea his way.

If you'll recall, I point out that the Vice President has a Constitutional role other than being the Backup QB: the Veep is also appointed the "President" of the Senate and serves as its official tie-breaker (due to the even-numbered seating the rules require). Making this position also the underling to the President was a trade-off with the original idea of balancing the winner of the Presidential contest with giving the runner-up a near-equal seat in government. That changed when the Winner/Runner-Up idea conflicted with the rise of parties and the need to run party tickets, and with the creation of the 12th Amendment.

They need to go back to the idea of the Senate leader (The current Vice President) being a separate electoral office. Instead of the Senate President be the runner-up in the Real President election as the Founders originally did - and instead of the current ticket-balancer the seat is now - hold a separate national election for the Senate President seat. To avoid confusion, rename the position as something from the Roman Republic past that our Founders drew inspiration from: call it the Senate Consul seat or something like it.

This way, the parties can run an individual candidate for the White House and an individual candidate for the Senate Consul chair, and not have to muck about with ticket balancing or partisan concerns. Easy and done.

Where the current role of Presidential Succession is filled by the Veep in the 25th Amendment, we can switch in the Senate Consul holder and nothing really changes. The only difference (and problem) is that the Consul could well be from an opposing party than the President's. But we already run that risk with the Second-in-line Speaker of the House, and it can be avoided if the national-level party factions can run successful co-campaigns (that is, if the Consul election is the same cycle as the President's).

There are valid arguments against this move, I know, but I think this is more viable than the current situation we've got now.

It would have avoided the whole damaging mess of Dick Cheney (can you picture him winning a national election on his own terms? Nope). That's all I'm saying.

What do you think, sirs?

Presidential Character: Week Thirty-Eight, A Brief Summation of a Short-Term Guy

As far as accidental Presidencies go, you can't get much further than this guy's.

Due to the occasional pattern of a President dying in office, the issue of succession got to be a growing concern.  While the Vice President was accepted as promoting upward into the White House, it left a vacancy in the Veep spot and it left questions as to who would serve next (the Speaker, Senate leader, Cabinet Secretary).

With the United States becoming a superpower by the 1940s, and becoming a nuclear power by the 1960s in the midst of a Cold War with the Soviets, the need to establish an immediate chain of succession became a must.  The need to fill a VP vacancy to keep that chain unbroken became a must.  Congress got around to passing the 25th Amendment, one of the more dramatic elements of the Constitution we have (because with its advent we have political thrillers over succession crises all over the bookshelves and movie screens).

It codified that the Vice President becomes President in case of death, impeachment or detrimental impairment.  When Tyler started the practice, it was only accepted as tradition, not strictly legal.  The amendment fixed that.

It required Congress to fill any Vice Presidential vacancy by voting for/against someone nominated to the post by the President.

The amendment basically made sure government would function as best as possible in case of emergency.  And by 1974 there was an emergency... and it had nothing to do with the Cold War.

The second term of Richard Nixon had become engulfed with scandal over the Watergate break-ins.  As more elements of the cover-up were revealed, other crimes broke to national attention.  Including revelations that Nixon's then-Vice President Spiro Agnew was involved in some bribery when serving as Maryland governor.  Agnew was forced to resign in 1973, leaving the Veep spot open and becoming the first use of the 25th.

When Nixon asked Congress - as a matter of custom, the President asks around for nominees - about a replacement, both Republicans and Democrats said the same name: Gerald Ford.

Ford at the time was the House Minority Leader (head of the House Republicans), a long-standing member with a solid track record of getting bipartisan legislation passed.  The guy was almost universally liked, and above all had an unblemished personal history.  Considering the scandal-plagued Nixon administration, getting the cleanest pol in the government was the only move Nixon could take.

While getting Ford to come into his administration was a necessity, it did nothing to slow down the on-going cascade of failure that was the Watergate scandal.  By August 1974, Nixon was facing a genuine impeachment vote (not a partisan one that other impeached Presidents had faced) and rather than accept the ignominy of that, he resigned.

Putting into the White House the only (so far) man never to have been elected to the job as either President or Veep.  Gerald Ford, someone whose highest aspirations beforehand was to become the University of Michigan's best-known football fan.  How accidental can you get?

I kid about Ford's aspirations: he actually had hopes of becoming Speaker of the House considering his long career there and the hopes of the electoral cycle playing to his favor.  But I'm serious about Ford's love for his alma mater: he forced the bands at the White House to play U Michigan's fight song rather than Hail To the Chief.

Past that, there is a kind of sadness about writing Ford's brief tenure as President.  It came during one of the more trying decades - the 1970s - in our nation's history: shaking off the bad buzz of the 1960s; coping with the unsatisfying end of the Vietnam War with South Vietnam falling in '75; the economic turmoil of inflation during a recession as the bills of the War and LBJ's Great Society dreams came due; and of course Disco.  Thank GOD we had Star Wars in 1977 (pity it didn't happen during Ford's administration).

Because of the ongoing crises both economic and foreign, Ford entered into the Presidency with a lot on his plate.  It's a tribute to his Active-Positive nature that he even survived the first few months without going batsh-t insane.

Lemme refer to our Professor Barber on this:

Strands of the Ford style and world view were gaining clarity even as he assumed office.  He would exemplify "simplicity, directness"; had "been a person who's helped to arrange compromises and co-ordinate things"; was one who "may not push so easily"... He's going to try to make the policies he adopts work, but I don't think you're going to find him hanging on to something after it's proved that it's not useful... (p. 387, noted as stuff he wrote as Ford entered the office in 1974)

As mentioned earlier, Active-Positive types are Adaptive and compromising, willing to work with others (a trait Ford carried with him as a long-term Congressman and party leader), and flexible in a pragmatic fashion.  Barber notes elsewhere (p.389) about Ford's childhood as one of activity and meeting challenges, bringing to it a vitality and enjoyment of life.

The pity of Ford's administration was that even an Active would get overwhelmed by the cascade of troubles that afflicted the nation: a Positive President who accepted the challenges but like all other A-Ps never realized the consequences until too late.  One thing that was different this time around was the speed at which results became clearer: previous waves of damage left in the wake of earlier A-P Presidents wouldn't come along for years, but due to the enormity of problems facing the nation that decade the reactions to Ford decisions were responding within months or weeks.

Ford's economic policies to end inflation was to encourage less buying/purchasing of goods and services, which dropped inflation out of double-digits... but the result of that was a lot of industries cutting back on jobs and closing out entire factories, increasing unemployment.

Ford made strides in foreign policy dealings especially in improving relations with the Soviet Union and China, but had growing struggles with the Middle East erupting over the violent Israeli/Arab conflicts and with the Greece/Turkey dispute over Cyprus.

While habitually attuned to compromise, due to Watergate and voter dissatisfaction the 1974 midterms created a super-majority for Democrats in the House, which created a situation where Congress would demand spending budgets and side projects that Ford would be forced to veto to impose some compromise deal.  And because Congress could override those vetoes, Ford didn't have much of a bargaining position.

Throw into all of this the most damaging thing an Active-Positive President could do:  Ford issued a pardon to Nixon - who was facing criminal charges even after resigning in disgrace - covering all crimes related to Watergate investigations.  While Ford was doing so in an attempt to end "the long national nightmare", he failed to realize that Americans needed closure not in forgiveness but in courtroom resolution, forcing Nixon to face the consequences of the broken faith in honorable governance he created.

Ford accepted the challenge of running for the Presidency on his own terms in his own right by 1976, facing first a primary challenge within his own party (Ronald Reagan running as a Goldwater-esque Far Right candidate) and then facing the general election against a genuine Outsider candidate in Governor Jimmy Carter.  Despite the public perceptions, despite the economic woes of the day, Ford campaigned as solidly as he could, and narrowly lost in one of the closest elections that didn't involve disputed ballot boxes our nation had seen.  The general consensus was that his pardoning Nixon cost him the election.

Ford didn't leave much of a legacy, having served so short a tenure as President.  If history remembers him it will be for his more honest administration restoring faith in government after the disasters of the Johnson and Nixon years, and for the amicable post-Presidency he served as elder party leader of a moderate faction in a Republican Party shifting ever rightward.

Next up: HISTORY'S GREATEST MONST... Oh, for God's Sake, Simpsons Writers, LIGHTEN UP.

Changing the Senate AND Changing the Veep

I mentioned earlier I had some ideas about fixing the Senate, especially when we consider how undemocratic that body of legislature is today.  What had been a balancing force between states and regional politics has altered into a logjam of political ideology, because the number of states have grown and the population difference between large states and small now unwieldy.

At the same time, I've had some issues regarding the Vice President, that it is for all intents an archaic office with only three functions: being the tie-breaking vote for the Senate (as President of the Senate), service as replacement/back-up to the sitting President, and of course protecting the space-time continuum.

So, like all mad scientists, I figure why not solve both problems with one solution?  (either that or create a giant monster, but for that I need a government grant)

First off, let's look at the office of the Veep: why does it exist, really?  Back in the beginning of the Constitution's formation, the Vice President was the second-place runner-up for the Presidency.  The Roman concept of co-consulships had appealed to the Founders, but they figured a true executive had to be in one person, so to the winner..  The consolation prize for getting second place was getting the President of the Senate, a body that was designed for even-number membership no matter what, meaning the need for a tie-breaker vote.  The Vice-Presidency was there to establish a chain of succession in case of emergency (which would get tested by 1841), and to grant the Senate body a slightly better rank of value over the House (and the Speaker of that body).

However, party formation f-cked that idea up by 1800.  The Founders didn't count on party factions trying to run on two-person tickets to secure both the Presidency and Vice-Presidency, creating a major constitutional crisis that had to be fixed with the Twelfth Amendment.  Now, the runner-up didn't get the Senate tie-breaker seat: the President got a loadstone around his neck in the form of a Veep who had no constitutional office within his own administration while the Senate got someone who answered more to the White House than the Capitol.

The thing is, a Vice President isn't really needed.  In terms of creating a succession chain, the Twenty-Fifth Amendment already establishes the means of determining who can replace the President if death, illness, impeachment and/or criminal prosecution happens.  And it can be tweaked as needed (for example, there is an ongoing push to revamp the succession among Cabinet members to have more national-security type offices - such as the newest one Homeland Security - get priority over other Secretaries such as Education or Housing/Urban Development).  What IS needed even if a VP is no longer part of the Executive branch is a tie-breaking vote for the Senate.

What's also needed for the Senate is a means to counter the unbalanced power that the smaller populated states - such as Wyoming or Montana or Delaware - have over the larger populated states - California and Texas and New York et al.  A handful of senators from enough small states can thwart the political will of senators from larger ones: in essence, a minority of the population can completely stymie the interests of the vast majority.  While the rights of the political minorities ought to be protected, that shouldn't come at the expense of the majority... EVERY... FREAKING... TIME.

More senators elected from the larger states might help counter that: it's been suggested before, so hello Professor Larry Sabato.  Another suggestion was to make ex-Presidents into permanent standing senators representing the whole nation: while it gives former Prezes something to do, it's not exactly a democratic answer (and having a Senator Dubya or Senator Jimmy Carter doesn't look too helpful, ya)... but the idea of nationally elected senators is more promising.

Nationally-elected senators would have the appeal and support of the nation's majority of voters (meaning those residing or sharing in the values of the larger states), providing a counterbalance to those senators from smaller (or more partisan-leaning) states.  Creating these new offices would also provide a start-point for those politicians tempted to run for higher national office (ahem, President) who may not be able to appeal at their residential state's level but at the national level (for example, a moderate Republican residing in Alabama able to run, or a centrist Democrat from Vermont).

Ergo, we can do this:

• Drop the Vice President office.  Presidential campaigns are now free to pursue a life of political fulfillment without juggling the demands of party factions.
• Create electable offices for the U.S. Senate for nationwide representation.  Make it an odd-then-even number of open offices to be filled for each of the Senate election cycles: three open seats for the first cycle, two (or four) open seats for the second, and then two (or four) open seats for the third.  You end up with seven (or eleven) National Senators.
• Have it so that the incoming Senate body votes between the incoming National Senators (who will not vote, as they are the candidates) for the office of Senate President (what the VP is supposed to be).  This is where the odd total number works: the appointed Senate President does not sit on committees but presides over the body, enforces decorum, and casts any tie-breaking votes as needed.  This might also provide wacky hijinks if say the Senate body is mostly one party but the national senators from another: trying to see who gets picked as Senate leader would be fuuuuunnnny (or of course create another constitutional crisis, but then again every action has its own unplanned consequence).
• Every new incoming Senate gets to vote on the Senate President.  It's possible for that person to just serve the two years: it all depends on that person's performance and/or the makeup of the new Senate.
• Insert the Senate President into the chain of succession as part of the Twenty-fifth.  Placed below the President and above the Speaker of the House, where the VP currently has the spot.  This means whoever gets chosen by the Senate to serve as Senate President has to fulfill the office requirements (over 35, resident of the nation 14+ years, must be a natural-born citizen).
• The remaining nationally elected Senators get to sit on committees and vote as regular members of the Senate.

Viola!  The National Senators replace the office of Vice President, and nothing gets lost.  The President no longer has to worry about a Vice President that could serve as a loose cannon or represent an inter-factional force against her (or his) own interests.  The Senate gets to choose their own Senate President who got elected on his/her own terms.  And the interests of the nation's majority has a better chance of getting heard and resolved.

Add this to the other proposal of increasing the number of senators elected from the ten or fifteen most-populated states (Sabato argues for 2 additional, but I feel 1 addition fits within the election cycle), and we reduce the damage that can be done by a small-population Senator even more.

This is a do-able amendment idea that can fix a lot of what's wrong with the U.S. Senate: the other fix - getting rid of Secrets Holds and weakening if not eliminating the filibuster altogether - has to be done by the Senators themselves.

To quote the wise man: What do you think, sirs?

Do we really need a Vice President?

With the primary cycle finished, the next phase of the prolonged Year of Election struggle to Teh White House is the selection of a co-campaigner by the two major nominees. We now await McCain and Obama to select their running mates to serve as their Vice President.

Originally, the Vice President was meant to be the runner-up, the second-most popular guy in school kinda booby prize. But this was before the Founders realized that we would form parties similar to the British electoral system, and well before they realized the Electoral College voting system could get screwed up without defining who was up for President and who was up for Veep.

Before this election cycle, I never really gave the Vice President selection process any deep thought. It was just one guy running for President selecting a backup guy to team with him and 'balance the ticket', in terms of party ideology and regional representation (President and Vice President, by law, cannot come from the same state, which is why Dick Cheney pretends he's from Wyoming). But this election cycle, after the last eight years, I'm seriously looking at how the VP process is working out. And I'm seriously arguing that, as of right now, we don't need a Vice President anymore.

Okay, we all know the duties of the Vice President are to 1) wait around for the President to resign or kick the bucket so the Veep can take over, 2) cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate if need be, and 3) protect the spacetime continuum. But the real purpose of the Vice President evolved from the political need of retaining party unity. Parties have their factions, and even with a majority faction getting their Dawg to the nomination for Prez the minority faction(s) need a bone tossed their way lest they bolt the party and vote elsewhere. Hence, Chester A. Arthur (Stalwart) balancing with Garfield (Half-Breed reformer), Teddy Roosevelt (Progressive) balancing out McKinley (pro-business), Walter Mondale (pro-labor) balancing with Jimmy Carter (pro-house building). But the flip-side problem to this was that the Vice President candidate couldn't outshine the Presidential candidate, meaning real colorless or real clueless types got dragged into the equations. Or that sometimes a Veep got added to a ticket that honestly couldn't stand the guy and ended up shipping him off to the wastelands (or worse, to foreign dignitaries' funerals), meaning the VP wasn't really part of any administration.

Historically, Vice Presidents meant so little outside of ticket balance. Few Presidents involved them in any ongoing projects within their administrations. A lot of that was because of the rise of the Cabinet: the Constitution allowed for 'advisors' to the President and from that arose the various Secretaries of departments such as State (foreign affairs), War (duh), Navy (sailing to war), Treasury (money!), Attorney General (lawsuits), and additional offices as the needs progressed. VPs were not included in that setup since their duties to the Senate could interfere, but also because early on the Presidents didn't want to hear from their Veeps that often. As a result, Vice Presidents did little. The office was pretty much where political careers went to die. Teddy Roosevelt once sent a noisy chandelier to his VP's office so it would keep him awake. The only times they ever mattered were when Presidents died. And even then, most of them found themselves alienated by their own parties because their ideologies conflicted with whatever majority remained in power (SEE John Tyler and Andrew Johnson). Few Vice Presidents distinguished themselves until Roosevelt did in the 1900s, and that was by sheer force of will on his part.

The Twentieth Century was pretty much when Vice Presidents became more important, or at least more noticeable. A lot of it had to do with the U.S.'s growing international role, especially regarding wartime. Legend had it Truman was added to the ticket in 1944 because FDR's frail health threatened to allow his then-VP Henry Wallace to perhaps succeed him and party leaders feared his pro-communist leanings. Post-WWII world politics quickly formed a new Cold War, and now all of a sudden who the Vice President was meant a lot more. The need to quickly establish a chain of succession in the face of nuclear attack meant the Vice President got invited to a few more meetings at the Oval Office than before. It also led to the 25th Amendment, which codified the Presidential succession, made the VP slot more important than ever before. Subsequent Vice Presidential candidates now had to appear qualified to lead this nation in case of catastrophe.

You'd think with everything I'd just pointed out in the last paragraph that I've just disproved my own argument against having a Vice President anymore. Well, the thing is, I've got to set up the opposing argument so I can knock it down. :-) You see, while in theory it's necessary to qualify the Vice President to be fit for office, in practice it's been more headache than anything else.

For example, the first true administration that had to deal with the 25th Amendment was Nixon's in 1968. That had Spiro Agnew as his Vice President. His qualification for the office was that he wasn't Nelson Rockefeller. His replacement was Gerald Ford in 1973, and his qualification was that he wasn't Richard Nixon. It wasn't until Mondale under Carter's administration that a VP had an office at the White House, and under Reagan Bush the Elder found things to do (although not many people would testify much about that). But otherwise those two did okay as Veeps that could, if called upon, to step up to the plate and lead.

And then Bush nominated Dan Quayle to be his Veep in 1988. I'm sorry, but... There's a Bloom County strip where they try to force Bill the Cat to sweat, and they shout "President Quayle!" at him, and of course the damn cat sweats his ass off. That's the best way I can describe this to you. Actually, there's a better way I can describe this: just take one look at George W. Bush's entire administration and picture Quayle instead of Dubya sitting there in the Oval Office. I still think Clinton won out in 1992 because he could point to his choice Al Gore and say "I chose smarter." Well, that and the fact that the anti-tax crowd abandoned Bush the Elder, but still...

The thing that has really turned me against the whole idea of there being a Vice President has been Dick Cheney's role in the Dubya administration. To be honest, has any previous Veep have this kind of control inside of a President's administration before? Worse, Cheney has used his position to hide his activities behind the President's aegis. For a time, he even argued that the Vice President's unique position of serving between the White House (as VP) and Congress (as Senate President) meant he didn't have to answer to either branch: Cheney only backed down when Congress called his bluff and threatened to de-fund his office. And even now, he still refuses to answer to anyone regarding his role in various scandals (refusal to disclose meetings with energy business leaders, the Plame incident, Torture memos, his ties to businesses involved with the Iraqi occupation, stuff like that). Under normal circumstances, his ass would have been impeached years ago. Or if Dubya had any balls ('cause if it was me, and I had an underling saying he didn't answer to anybody... I'd have called that idiot before me and said "Dude. You answer to me. You're fired."), or a sense of being his own man, he'd have reined that Dick in.

When Cheney pulled that "Vice President as a Fourth Branch" BS, I seriously wondered "do we need that job anymore?" And the more I thought about it, the more I realize we really don't need a Vice President anymore.

For one thing, the 25th amendment that established a chain of succession to the Presidency now allows others to fill the role of successor (House Speaker, Senate Pro Tempore, then the Cabinet Secretaries). You can take the VP out of that equation and nothing major would be wrong: the House Speaker may still be from an opposing party, but the Speaker is still a major elected official heading a majority party in the House so it's not as though a vastly unpopular person would take over in case of emergency. And also, if there were an attack that would have gotten both the President and the Speaker (usually at the State of the Union address), it would get the Vice President anyway since he's got to attend as well to represent the Senate. There will still be a designated survivor sitting somewhere safe and ready to go under the 25th.

As pointed out earlier, there wasn't a need for a Vice President for political input anyway: the President had the Cabinet Secretaries for that. The only reason VPs became more important during the 20th Century was due to the Cold War and the need for rapid response in the face of nuclear war with the Commies. But the fall of the Soviet Union, and the increasing odds that the major powers WON'T go to war (even war with China is unlikely, even over something like Taiwan isn't worth it), has lessened the role of the Veep as a Cold War Warrior-to-be.

The other thing Vice Presidents had as value were as ticket balancers for election campaigns. But let's face it, why bother? If someone won the nomination for the Presidency from his/her party, it was because a majority of party members liked their chances to win the office. If the minority faction, usually the more extreme elements of said party, have a problem with it they have nowhere really to go. Just look at the 1948 election: Truman's Democratic Party splintered into THREE factions that year, in the face of a relatively unified Republican campaign... and Truman still won, even with the Dixiecrats pulling Southern states away from him. You could blame the GOP for not running an effective campaign, but let's consider that the Dem factions were smaller in number and power than they thought they were. Truman was able to appeal to a broader base of voters than they could.

Another thing the extremist factions need to consider is that if they flee to a third party, much in the way Far Leftists fled to Nader for the 2000 election, it's not going to win you the White House, it may in fact hurt your original party's candidate instead and put into the Presidency a guy you would hate even more. To the Far Right people groaning about McCain, thinking you can flee to someone else come Convention time, and to the Clintonites groaning about Obama, thinking that your Holiest of Holies Hillary "deserved" the nomination, shut up. You go running elsewhere and you'll guarantee the other guy wins it.

So why even bother placating the extremists in either party with a Vice Presidency nomination? Answer: you don't need to. Your party has a candidate for President: NOW RUN! If I went to McCain and Obama and told them they didn't need to worry over a vetting process to select a running mate, and that they could run their own campaign for the Presidency without having to worry about the clueless hacks they'd otherwise put on their tickets, they'd both gladly run off to their next thousand-dollar dinner fund-raisers and never look back.

To be honest, the only sticking point about getting rid of the office of the Vice President is over the one true duty that office entails: the tie-breaking vote in the Senate. Given the structure of the place (2 Senators per state) means an even count of Senators no matter what: the odds are there that ties can happen. However, there is a solution, albeit convoluted: get a Secretary from the Cabinet to serve as Senate President and perform the tie-breaking vote as needed. Given the role of the Senate in approving treaties, it makes sense the Cabinet position that could serve the role would be the Secretary of State. Other choices like Defense or Treasury are possible. In case of there being any conflict of interest, the Senate can nominate an alternate tie-breaker beforehand, such as during the nomination process of the President's incoming administration.

Viola. There's no more need for a Vice President to exist.

Doesn't it feel so much better? Like a breath of fresh air... ahhhh...

But of course nobody reads this blog and everything else I've tried to find online about other people arguing for the end of the Vice President's office can't be recovered. So that said, if I had control of the vetting process for both parties... who would I go for as VP on both tickets?

Stay tuned for the next post. This one's already too long.