Who Would Be the Best Speaker of the House
Rep. Kevin McCarthy's decision this week to drop out of the race for Speaker of the House has left Washington talking about who else might be able to fill that seat. With current Speaker John Boehner leaving function at the end of October, time is running out. Only it's not a choice to be made hastily: the Speaker of the House already wields enormous power in Congress, but he or she also holds even greater potential power. In the event of a President'southward death, next in line is Vice President; after that, the Speaker of the Business firm moves to the White House.
But that has not always been the order of succession. In the tardily 19th century, the protocol specified that afterward the Vice President, the Senate'due south President pro tem would exist adjacent in line. That caused a problem in 1881 when President James Garfield was assassinated. His Vice President Chester Allen Arthur was himself seriously ill, but Congress was not in session, and then at that place was no elected officer to exist 2nd in line. (Or third, if y'all count the sitting president as number i.) "As a result of this and other crises," TIME later on reported, "Congress in 1886 passed a new Presidential Succession Act, making the Secretary of Country next in line after the Vice President."
Notwithstanding, in 1945, President Harry Truman requested that the law exist changed. He suggested putting the Speaker of the House and so the Senate President pro tem ahead of the Secretarial assistant of Land. His rationale, every bit TIME reported, was that the President should non be able to cull his ain successor in naming a Secretary of State: "The 2 Congressional leaders, he said, were more logical successors because they came closest to being elected by all voters of the nation." Incidentally, Truman's Secretarial assistant of State at the time was quite a boyfriend, while the Congressional leaders were older and more experienced, and thus considered improve candidates to run the nation should the need arise.
In 1947, Congress did pass Truman's suggested police, at which indicate Speaker Joe Martin, "now simply one heartbeat from the White Business firm," as Fourth dimension wrote, "said he hoped President Truman would continue to savour 'the best of wellness.'"
As Fourth dimension pointed out in its coverage, the new constabulary raised a sticky state of affairs for ruling parties that may be even more relevant now than it was in the 1940s: "a Speaker might well exist a political opponent of the Administration he would take over."
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Source: https://time.com/4067986/speaker-of-the-house-succession-history/
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