Kremer’s Corner – It is time to dust off the 25th Amendment

Jerry Kremer

Lately, we have been inundated with media reports and interviews using the “I” word, as in impeachment.

After story after story announcing that members of the House of Representatives are lining up to support an impeachment inquiry of the president, it is clear that there are not enough members of the House to begin a formal inquiry.

There has always been an alternative to impeachment, but there has been little current discussion about the 25th Amendment, so maybe now is the time.

The 25th amendment says that a president can be removed if the vice president and a majority of the cabinet determine he or she “is unable to discharge the powers and duties” of the office.

If the president contests the finding, and the vice president and cabinet persist, Congress can order the president’s removal by a two-thirds vote in each chamber. After such action, the vice president becomes the successor.

Once you read the language of the amendment your first reaction is that based on current political divisions, this scenario will never happen, but maybe it could in light of the president’s recent utterances.

In the course of 24 hours, President Trump declared himself “King of Israel,” “Second Coming of God,” and the “Chosen One.” He started a fight with the Prime Minister of Denmark because she called his proposal to buy Greenland “absurd.”

Over a course of one week the president backtracked on a promise to support background checks for gun buyers, suggested that he would favor a reduction in payroll taxes and then reneged, and attacked a host of people, including his Federal Reserve chair appointee.

He still refers to Korean dictator Kim Jun as someone he is “in love with” and bragged about the latest letter he received from North Korea, at the same time as they were firing two new strategic missiles into the sea.

Every president has the right to advance proposals and then backtrack, but isn’t the big picture emerging that Trump is “unable to discharge his duties.”

His ardent supporters will claim that there is no way that Vice President Pence and cabinet members would ever seek to remove the president. But think about it. Pence has been a heartbeat away from being the leader for almost three years.

He has observed the daily antics of his boss and no doubt, in the privacy of his home, has expressed a few thoughts about the president’s ability to serve. I would be willing to place a dollar bet that if the president thinks he might lose the 2020 election, he will dump Mr. Pence and pick Nicki Haley as his running mate.

As for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, if this president was removed from office, the chances of the Republicans keeping control of the Senate would improve dramatically. There is no doubt that most of the 52 Republican senators are exhausted from either defending the president or being chased for responses to the president’s daily barrage of tweets.

The senators keep a straight face when someone shoves a microphone in front of them but you can be certain that when they dine in the taxpayer-funded dining room they are itching to get Mr. Trump sidelined.

Our readers might say all of these possibilities can’t and won’t happen. But what should the Congress do if the president does something irrational in the weeks ahead like dropping a bomb on Iran? How about deciding to let the Taliban take over Afghanistan based on their pledge to become the good guys.

I can think of countless scary things that are discussed in the Oval office that will never get out onto the public stage. Few of us have ever met John Bolton, but read his history and you will understand what could happen if the president has a massive hissy fit.

So for now let’s scrap the impeachment talk and focus on the 25th amendment to the Constitution. It may be our last best hope.

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