http://tinyurl.com/3v54wa
- - - How can we avoid a similar fate? The present January inaugural date is fixed by the 20th Amendment to the Constitution. Changing that would take years, not days. But there is a way out - if our political leaders are smart, courageous, and public-spirited enough to take it. Assume that Barack Obama wins the election, as polls show is increasingly likely. The following day, Vice President Cheney should be prevailed upon to resign. Using his powers to designate a successor under the 25th Amendment, President Bush should then appoint, and Congress should confirm, Obama as vice president (just as Richard Nixon appointed Gerald Ford vice president in 1973 when Spiro Agnew resigned). Bush himself should then resign, elevating Obama to the presidency - as Ford became president when Nixon resigned. Obama should then appoint Joe Biden as vice president. With Congress's confirmation of Biden, the new administration would be in place, on the job, and ready to tackle the economic crisis - in November, not January. (The electoral college's official ratification of the election results in December would merely rubber-stamp the transition.) Such extraordinary action would be particularly appropriate in the event of an Obama/Biden victory, since that ticket promises the most dramatic change from the current administration's approach and policies. However, it could be pursued with equal effectiveness if the McCain/Palin ticket is victorious. The goal remains the same: Get the new administration up, running, and dealing with the crisis as quickly as possible. It is simply vital for the government to act in as urgent a fashion as the situation demands. The founding fathers' original four-month "interregnum" may have made sense at a time when election results were disseminated and presidents-elect transported to Washington at a horse's pace. The 20th Amendment, adopted in 1933, shortened that interval to its present 11 weeks. That amendment moved us in the right direction. It simply didn't go far enough. Most free nations change administrations with far greater dispatch. The British, for example, replace their governments virtually overnight. If you're elected prime minister on Thursday, the Queen calls you to the palace on Friday and asks you to form a new government. Meanwhile, the movers are already packing up your predecessor. We can fix our system now, before it causes irreparable harm. Why wait? - - - The concept is "orderly transfer of power". This "proposal" is a recipe for disaster, no matter who wins, and its appeal is as illusory as the underlying assumption -- that you can just plop the new POTUS and VPOTUS in a desk and they can start driving the Xbox controller of the US Government -- is ridiculous. This is how unstable banana republics do politics---frequent, often fraudulent elections, where the victors seize total power immediately and the losers hop on a helicopter out of the country, before the angry mobs start hacking people. Like Kenya, for example. I guess in a perverse sense we could consider Obama "ready to lead" based on his experience in Kenyan politics. This is nuts, like everything about this so-called election. My heart is breaking this year. I can't believe what I'm witnessing. - Bob _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[EMAIL PROTECTED] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
