Am I Missing Something Here?

Recent headlines have the New York Times and other Democrat outlets starting to suggest Joe step aside in favor of another Democrat candidate and decline to run in the fall. What seems to go unmentioned so far is the possibility of him relinquishing the presidency, or being forced out, under the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution. The big problem with either scenario is Kamala Harris.

Although she poses a potential problem if all Joe does is withdraw from the race but continue as president for the rest of his term, Kamala is a bigger problem under the 25th Amendment. She herself sees no obstacle to this contingency:

Vice President Harris said she’s ready for the presidency in an interview last week, amid concerns about President Biden’s age.

“I am ready to serve. There’s no question about that,” Harris told the Wall Street Journal when asked about the challenge of convincing voters she’s up for the job.

Those who see her work are “fully aware” of her “capacity to lead,” Harris said in the interview, just days before a special counsel report stoked renewed questions about Biden’s age and mental aptitude.

The particular difficulty if Biden were to be forced out of the presidency before January 20, as opposed to simply declaring he wouldn't run in the fall but remaining in office, would be the vice presidential provision in the 25th Amendment:

SECTION 1. In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.

SECTION 2. Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.

The difficulty this year would be timing as it relates to the potential for Kamala succeeding to the office. The opinion has already been put out that Kamala is so visibly inept that she amounts to 25th Amendment insurance for Joe: she's even less popular than Joe, so she'd almost certainly lose to any Republican in November, but even if she were to succeed to the presidency before then, there's a general perception that she'd be no more effective than a severely limited Joe in the office.

The people who actually ran the country had an equivalent problem with Spiro Agnew in 1973, although Agnew as vice president was certainly no worse than many of his predecessors or successors, like John Garner, Alben Barkley, or Dan Quayle. Nevertheless, it was apparently felt necessary to remove Agnew as potential 25th Amendment insurance and replace him with a figure who had more gravitas -- who turned out to be Gerald Ford -- before the real job of removing Nixon could be undertaken.

But even there, as I noted Sunday, it took from October 10 to December 6, 1973 to nominate Ford and secure his confirmation, more than two months. It took even longer for Ford to secure confirmatiom for Nelson Rockefeller, his own nominee for vice president, from August 20, 1974 to December 19, 1974, four months. According to Wikipedia at the link,

Rockefeller underwent extended hearings before Congress, suffering embarrassment when it was revealed he made massive gifts to senior aides, such as Henry Kissinger, and used his personal fortune to finance a scurrilous biography of political opponent Arthur Goldberg. He had also taken debatable deductions on his federal income taxes, and ultimately agreed to pay nearly one million dollars to settle the issue, but no illegalities were uncovered, and he was confirmed.

It's worth noting that Agnew resigned, setting the vice presidential succession procedures into motion, with more than three years left in his second term. When Nixon resigned a year later, there were still more than two years left in his term. Even so, in both cases, it took two to four months to confirm the vice presidential successors. This year, if Biden were to leave the presidency after the primary season but before the Democrat convention, there likely wouldn't be time to confirm a successor before the election.

Not only that, but it's hard right now to imagine the House under Speaker Johnson confirming anyone nominated for the vice presidency by a President Harris, especially since Johnson as House Speaker would, without a sitting vice president, be next directly in line to succeed Harris should she herself leave the office. This would, if Harris were to leave, put a Republican in the presidency before the election.

Thus the current consitutional crisis, in which there's steadily declining confidence in the president's ability to function in office, extends beyond Biden himself to his successor. Any deal that involved Joe's resignation would also need in some way to encompass Kamala, because otherwise there's no realistic path to filling the office of vice president before the election, and there's no more confidence in Kamala's ability to function in the office than Joe's.

Even if we invoke names like John Garner, Alben Barkley, Spiro Agnew, or Dan Quayle, Kamala Harris doesn't seem to fit in even that group. We need to pray there's no national crisis between now and next January so great that it would require Biden's removal, because removing Biden wouldn't solve the bigger problem. Right now, the problem of timing alone makes a solution unlikely, but also at least for now, any deal equivalent to replacing Agnew before replacing Nixon in 1973-4 is almost certainly beyond the ability of the current movers and shakers.