Posted on 01/22/2009 6:09:47 AM PST by lulubelle85
(7) Section 19(d)(1) of the Presidential Succession Act provides: "If, by reason of ... failure to qualify, there is no President pro tempore to act as President under subsection (b) of this section, then the officer of the United States who is highest on the following list, and who is not under disability to discharge the powers and duties of the office of President shall act as President: Secretary of State ...." (8) Notably, Section 19(d)(1) does not condition the Secretary of State's assumption of the powers and duties of the office of President on resignation of her current office, nor does elevation of the Secretary of State raise any constitutional issue of interbranch appointment. (9) The term of office of the Secretary of State does not automatically terminate at noon on the 20th day of January. (10) On January 20, 2009, Condoleeza Rice was (and is) still the Secretary of State. (11) Accordingly, from 12:00 noon until 12:01 p.m. (when Vice President Biden took the oath of office and became Vice President), Condoleeza Rice was momentarily the Acting President of the United States, our first African-American President. I suppose the obvious counterargument is that Secretary Rice also never took the Oath prescribed in Art. II, Sec. 1, cl. 8, and thus was no more qualified than Barack Obama or Joe Biden to act as President at 12:00 noon. But if Secretary Rice was not President from noon to 12:01, then who was?
(Excerpt) Read more at volokh.com ...
I LOVE it! But wouldn’t that make Maddie Halfbright technically the first woman President?
I have heard enough about Black already.
I think it was Alexander Haig. (Hey, he must have spent time in the hood somewhere!)
Answer: No.
Obama did not complete the oath of office util Wednesday afternoon. So by this logic, of the esteeemed Mr. Levin, Rice was president for about 24 hours.
I believe the line os succession following the VP, Speaker and Pres. Pro. Tem. of the Senate is the Treasury Secretary.
this is “just for fun” according to the author...
bookmark
This whole thing about the oath is pretty silly. It’s not the oath that makes him President. He becomes President at Noon. Period. The oath of office is simply a constitutionally required duty of a new President. Like the mandate in the Constitution to report to Congress annually on the state of the union. He doesn’t stop being President if he doesn’t do it, but he would be in violation of the law.
We really need to move on to other things.
There’s a thousand points on which Zero can be attacked - this just makes us look ridiculous.
The incoming Vice President was sworn in at 11:30 AM. IF (BIG IF) Obama was not "eligible" under the 20th Amendment because he had not yet taken the oath (And neither had Condi Rice for that matter.) then Biden would have been acting as President until Obama became eligible. But he would not have been President, just acting (which is what he's doing anyway so he would have been able to step right in).
ML/NJ
There’s also been a lot of brewhaha about him “flubbing” the oath. If he did, and that disqualifies him, then Nixon was disqualified as well. The oath states “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution” and I’ve seen a video of Nixon’s inauguration (don’t know if it’s the first or second) where Nixon said “preserve and protect and defend...” He added an extra “and” which meant he didn’t state the oath as written in the Constitution.
As someone else said, we need to quit nitpicking on trivial stuff, it makes us look like idiots.
It was Nixon’s second inaugural. I watched it live on television, as Warren Burger administered the oath in his first inaugural as Chief Justice (Earl Warren administered the oath to Nixon in 1969).
Burger messed it up, just as you say: “Preserve and Protect and Defend” the Constitution and Nixon repeated it. Nobody said a word about it, as I remember.
Maybe it’s because Nixon was already in office.
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