Six Crises (32 page)

The President's eye was on something far more important than the
political implications: he wanted someone there with the authority to act in his behalf in a crisis or national emergency if he should again become incapacitated. The problem of presidential disability is complex, dating back to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 when Delaware's Delegate John Dickinson brought it up and got no answer.

Authorities and experts have written books on the subject, all dealing with the ambiguity of Article II, Section I, Clause 5 of the Constitution, which says:

In case of the removal of the President from office, or of his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of the said office, the same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by law provide for the case of removal, death, resignation, or inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what officer shall then act as President, and such officer shall act accordingly, until the disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.

Simply stated, this clause does not make clear: who decides when the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office? just what devolves upon the Vice President, the “powers and duties” or the “office” itself? can the President resume office once he has given it up? who decides if the President is well enough to resume his office, if he can at all?

Anyone, I think, can imagine two dozen troublesome contingencies which might become involved in passing the powers of a President to a Vice President, and constitutional lawyers, who have studied the question for more than a hundred years, can think of two hundred more. President Eisenhower, after studying the problem closely, was intent on solving the practical problem of giving his Vice President the authority to act immediately in a crisis, if necessary. He mentioned several alternatives, but kept coming back to the idea of writing a letter which would give the Vice President alone the authority to decide when the President was unable to carry on—that is, when the President himself was unable to make the decision.

In early February, the President called Rogers and me into his office, commented that he thought he had licked the problem, and handed each of us a copy of a letter. Then he leaned back in his chair and, while we followed on our copies, he read a four-page letter to us, beginning, “Dear Dick.” We made some minor suggestions and he incorporated them into the letter and then sent it on to his secretary, Ann Whitman, for final typing. Marked
PERSONAL AND SECRET
, one copy went to me, one to Bill Rogers as Attorney General, and one to John
Foster Dulles, as Secretary of State and ranking member of the Cabinet.

With the exception of our very minor suggestions, the letter was wholly Eisenhower's in concept and drafting, and it was a masterpiece. Leaving the White House, Bill Rogers remarked that Eisenhower would have made an outstanding lawyer, for the letter handled the contingencies of a very complex problem from every angle and was as good a drafting job as any constitutional expert could have done.

The President made public the following key paragraphs:

The President and the Vice President have agreed that the following procedures are in accord with the purposes and provisions of Article 2, Section 1, of the Constitution, dealing with Presidential inability. They believe that these procedures, which are intended to apply to themselves only, are in no sense outside or contrary to the Constitution but are consistent with its present provisions and implement its clear intent.

(1) In the event of inability the President would—if possible—so inform the Vice President, and the Vice President would serve as Acting President, exercising the powers and duties of the office until the inability had ended.

(2) In the event of an inability which would prevent the President from so communicating with the Vice President, the Vice President, after such consultation as seems to him appropriate under the circumstances, would decide upon the devolution of the powers and duties of the Office and would serve as Acting President until the inability had ended.

(3) The President, in either event, would determine when the inability had ended and at that time would resume the full exercise of the powers and duties of the Office.

This letter established historical precedent. Eisenhower was the first President in American history to take cognizance of and act upon a serious gap in our Constitution. President Kennedy, even before his inauguration, drew up an identical list of procedures for his Vice President, Lyndon Johnson, to follow in exercising the rights and duties of the President in the event of Kennedy's incapacity. The new Administration adopted in its entirety the section of the Eisenhower letter which was made public, and it would be fair to assume that President Kennedy's successor will follow the precedent.

But what must be clearly understood is that the agreement President Eisenhower set forth in his letter to me, and the one President Kennedy has entered into with Vice President Johnson, are only as good as the will of the parties to keep them. Presidents and Vice Presidents have
not always had the mutual trust and the cordial relations President Eisenhower had with me or that President Kennedy has had with Vice President Johnson up to this time. Jealousies and rivalries can develop within an Administration which could completely destroy such an agreement.

Only a constitutional amendment can solve the problem on a permanent basis. President Eisenhower's agreement with me was personal and had the force of his authority only during his term of office. President Kennedy's agreement is similarly limited. These agreements, which are mere expressions of a President's desires, do not have the force of law. Even a law passed by Congress might be subject to constitutional challenge. However, such a law would express the will of Congress and should be passed while the incumbent President is in good health and before a presidential election year drags politics into an already complex problem. The experiences of Garfield, Wilson, and Eisenhower should have taught us a lesson. Surely the time has come for a truly bipartisan program to draw up a constitutional amendment which would define the rights and duties of a Vice President during any period when the President of the United States is incapacitated.

The urgent need for such an amendment becomes crystal clear when a President is disabled, but that is precisely the time when politics bar any reasonable agreement on the wording of such an amendment. The time to begin solving this problem is now, when the incumbent President is in good health and at a safe distance from the politics of a presidential election year. It is hardly necessary to point out that these perilous times in which we live will continue, and more than ever before our nation will need an able and healthy Chief Executive or acting Chief Executive at all times.

Action on this problem will have important side effects as well. It will assure the continued useful employment of the Vice President as a deputy of the President rather than as a fifth wheel in the government, another precedent established by Eisenhower. The Vice President will thus become an integrated member of the incumbent Administration, able and ready to take over the rights and duties of the President if it becomes necessary. This being true, it also will bolster the new political trend of selecting capable men as vice presidential nominees, men to whom the presidential nominee would be willing to turn over his duties during a period of disability, rather than the selection of men solely on geographical, factional, or party appeasement considerations.

The heart attack, the ileitis operation, and the stroke were terribly
difficult personal crises for President Eisenhower. They were to a less and different extent personal crises for me. But even more, they were potential constitutional crises of the greatest magnitude for the nation. If such a crisis should arise in the future, its outcome should not be dependent upon the personal whims of whoever happens to hold the offices of President and Vice President, but on the law of the land, as approved by the Congress or as set forth in the Constitution.

The classic crisis is one involving physical danger. What is essential in such situations is not so much “bravery” in the face of danger as the ability to think “selflessly”—to blank-out any thought of personal fear by concentrating completely on how to meet the danger.

OF all the trips I made abroad as Vice President the one I least wanted to take was my visit to South America in 1958—not because I thought it would be difficult but because I thought it would be relatively unimportant and uninteresting compared to the assignments I had in Washington at that time.

Early in March 1958, Roy R. Rubottom, Jr., the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, called on me in my office. He said that the State Department wanted me to represent the United States at the inauguration of Arturo Frondizi as President of Argentina. He said there were several reasons why they wanted someone of my rank to head the usual delegation of dignitaries for this event. South America needed recognition at the highest level. Argentina was a symbol of the new tides that were beginning to emerge throughout this hemisphere. Juan Peron had been the strongest of the dictators and had been overthrown. A responsible group of men forming a military junta had taken over and now after the first free election in twenty years, Frondizi was to be inaugurated.

It was essential, Rubottom pointed out, that the highest official available for such assignments from the United States attend the inauguration to help knock down the widespread impression in Latin America that the United States had sympathized with Peron.

I told Rubottom that I could see the merits of his arguments but I could not spare the time for a trip outside the country because of my current heavy work load in Washington. Nineteen fifty-eight was an election year. Despite President Eisenhower's landslide in 1956, we had not won the Congress and the prospects were that we would lose more seats in the fall. I thought I should stay in Washington to help make preparations for the campaign and to participate in the discussions going on within the Administration as to how to fight the deepening recession which was causing increasing concern throughout the country. Also, I did not believe that a “purely protocol” trip which Rubottom had described, where I would be one of sixty or seventy dignitaries from foreign countries, would afford enough of an opportunity for serious constructive conversations with the new government leaders to justify my leaving my duties in Washington. For these reasons, I told him flatly that I could not make the trip.

But Rubottom, a career foreign service officer, was not only persuasive, he was persistent. He also knew how to get things done in Washington. The day after his first visit to my office, I received a call from my long-time friend and original mentor in the foreign affairs field, Christian Herter, who was then Under Secretary of State. I had the highest regard and respect for Herter and I heard him out as he described the need for some dramatic gesture of recognition from the United States of the new government in Argentina. But I still said no.

A few days later, Foster Dulles dropped in on me one evening at my home and after discussing some other subjects he brought up the proposed trip. Like the master advocate he was, he analyzed my reasons for wanting to stay in Washington against the need for me to make the trip. He argued that it was essential for our foreign policy not only for me to appear at Frondizi's inauguration but also, if possible, to arrange to stop in several other South American countries.

The next day, after a Cabinet meeting at the White House, President Eisenhower asked me to step into his office. He mentioned that he had been speaking to his brother, Milton, and to Dulles and that they felt a tour of South America at this time would be of considerable long-range benefit to the nation. He said that while he understood my commitments in Washington were also of top importance he hoped I could somehow find time to fit in a brief assignment in the Southern Hemisphere.

This was the way, incidentally, Eisenhower always broached assignments he wanted me to undertake. He recognized that the Constitution had established the presidency and vice presidency as separate and
independent offices. He never ordered me to do something. He would wonder aloud if I might like to take over this or that project, always couching his recommendations in terms which would cause no embarrassment to either of us if I preferred to say no. There was, of course, never an occasion when I did not willingly accept the assignments he suggested.

When I called Rubottom the next day I was somewhat irritated at him for boxing me in so neatly. But I had to admit to myself that he deserved considerable credit for his skill and follow-through in accomplishing an objective he thought was vital to the interests of his department and the nation. When I authorized him to make the preliminary arrangements I knew from my conversation with Dulles that the trip would be extended beyond the protocol visit to Argentina. Consequently I warned Rubottom, “Under no circumstances do I want to be away from Washington for more than one week—that is, from take-off to landing at National Airport, one week.” He said that he would carry out my wishes in that respect. I figured that having given him a week, I had probably limited the trip to no more than ten days.