Yeah, Don't Rule Out The Agnew Scenario
Just to kinda let you guys in on a little secret here. I was told, you know, about two to three weeks ago–maybe this pertains to the Supreme Court, maybe this pertains to, you know, changing the ticket before you get into 2024. You know, FDR, seemingly, he burned through a vice president almost every, every time he was up for office. But I got an email from somebody who really knows this place very well who said, “Chad, start to familiarize yourself with the confirmation process just not in the Senate but the House for a vice president.” Of course, we’ve not gone through that since, you know, President Ford picked Nelson Rockefeller. Again, as you know, Bret, I’m always playing defense and preparing for things like that, but I was very surprised to get that very cryptic email just a couple of weeks ago.
Chad Pegram's bio appears here, which suggests he's neither a conspiracy theorist, nor a fabulist, nor a flake. The only correction I would make to his account is that it's not "we’ve not gone through that since"; we simply never went through that before then, since the 25th Amendment was ratified only in 1967. Before that, there was no provision for filling a vacancy in the vice president's office.While Kennedy's assassination was the clear impetus for adopting the amendment, when it was envisioned that a president could lie in an indefinite coma under some circumstances, Agnew's resignation has been the only non-trivial invocation of its provisions. Most vice presidents since Agnew have had enough substance that nobody's seriously contemplated edging them out before their term expires, and in fact it's hard to think any veep ever has been so without sin (possibly excepting Coolidge) that some hidden flaw couldn't be found in his record to warrant removal should this become convenient.
Indeed, had circumstances been otherwise, nobody would have bothered with Agnew's Baltimore baksheesh, and he would have stayed in office until 1977. Certainly this was Agnew's own belief, and it's hard to fault. Agnew was caught up in Nixon's dilemma, and it was simply convenient to remove him in order to facilitate removing Nixon. I can't imagine that Gerald Ford had no similar blemishes; it just wasn't convenient to go looking for them at the time.
By trhe same token, I don't think such discussion would be taking place about Harris, even on a completley unofficial, without-attribution basis, if the actual problem were not with Biden. And despite vague speculation a year ago that the 25th might be invoked against Biden, I think it's significant that the only non-trivial historical use of it was with Section 2 and the vice presidential succession, the same one being mooted now, if even not quite seriously.
As with Agnew, Vice President Harris is simply a surrogate for President Biden. I've been saying here that Biden's lack of coherence and engagement is simply not the result of a medical condition other than chronic alcoholism, and he's not the first to suffer fom it without being removed. If you ask me, Biden's problem is neither his own polls nor Harris's; the problem right now is Trump's polls. At minimum, the lizard people are figuring the 2024 ticket needs a makeover well before campaign season.
So far, this leaves aside the problem of 2022 and the bigger problem that the issues that are hurting Biden now on one hand aren't likely to go away, and on the other, aren't likely to be the worst he, and we, will need to face before the lizard people can ease him out. I have a sense that the lizard people are still working this through, but the Agnew scenario has clearly at least reached the spitball stage.
