On the Presidential Succession
On the eve of the bicentennial of independence, the American experiment in self-government was confronted by a startling development: the President and Vice President who would lead the celebrations on July 4, 1976, would be persons who had come to office and power, not through election, like all their predecessors, but through appointment. Even more disturbing was the thought that the source of this President's appointment was a former President whose first Vice President had resigned in disgrace as a confessed felon and who himself had resigned in the face of virtual certainty that he would otherwise have been impeached and removed because of high crimes and misdemeanors against the United States. Nothing like this had ever happened, or could ever have happened, in the earlier history of the republic. The right of the people to choose their own leaders had been assumed by definition as a fundamental point of self-government. A major premise of American politics had always been -at least up to 1967-that the President was an elected, not an appointed, official. The Constitution (Article II, Section i) expressly provided that the President and Vice President were to "be elected." The Founding Fathers believed that no one who had not been elected to the Presidency should serve as President any longer than necessary to organize a new