We rarely see these opportunities for bipartisan self-improvement, but we’ve got one right now: How about if everyone agrees to knock off the sensationalistic nonsense around the 25th Amendment?
Three and a half years ago, Democrats and others — rightly enraged about Donald Trump’s effort to seize power by force on January 6 — wrongly pointed to the 25th as a source of potential legal redress. (Impeachment and indictment, sure, but the 25th didn’t fit.) Right now, Republicans are having a disingenuous constitutional temper tantrum about Joe Biden’s cognitive ability to finish out his term. Both parties tried to distort the meaning and intent behind the 25th Amendment to achieve expedient political and rhetorical ends. We’d be better served by reserving the provision for when it’s truly needed.
The history is vital here. In 1965, less than two years after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, both the House and Senate passed the 25th Amendment by the constitutionally mandated two-thirds vote. Nearly two years after that, in early 1967, the amendment was ratified when it gained approval from the required three-fourths of states. The overarching concern arose from the horror of the Kennedy assassination. What if, we rightly wondered, Kennedy had been hit at a slightly different trajectory and wound up alive but comatose? What if any president reached a point of incapacitation?
Up until 1967, we had no answer. But the 25th Amendment established a procedure to transfer power away from a president who is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” The text is key: “unable” to do the job. Not “has declined from his prime and has trouble descending staircases and reading from a teleprompter”........