Curious to know who would become President of the United States if Bush and Cheney were knocked off? Most of you probably know it would be the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and that President pro tempore of the Senate, Robert Byrd is next in line. But who's after that and beyond? Below is a list of the Order of Presidential Succession:
* The Vice President Dick Cheney
* Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi
* President pro tempore of the Senate Robert Byrd
* Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
* Secretary of the Treasury
* Secretary of Defense
* Attorney General
* Secretary of the Interior
* Secretary of Agriculture
* Secretary of Commerce
* Secretary of Labor
* Secretary of Health and Human Services
* Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
* Secretary of Transportation
* Secretary of Energy
* Secretary of Education
* Secretary of Veterans Affairs
* Secretary of Homeland Security
Curious about the order of the Cabinet positions, especially why Sec of Treasury is above Sec of Defense? The cabinet members are ordered in the line of succession according to the date their offices were established. Kinda lame if you ask me, but whatever.
Another interesting factoid that actually inspired this blog post. When the Vice President takes the Office of the President, there is no longer a Vice President. So when Truman, LBJ, and Ford assumed the Presidency they had no Vice President by their side.
Right, that happened on West Wing too. The Vice President took over power (actually it was the Speaker because the original VP had been fired) when the President had to step down, and there was no VP for him initially. In that case, I think the new President can nominate a VP and have him/her approved by Congress, kind of like Attorney General, etc.
Posted by: shout on Jun 13, 08 | 8:16 pm
What's really lame is that the majority party in the Senate always elects their senior member President pro tempore, ensuring that the person third in line for the White House is usually a senile octogenarian who should be presiding over a match of nursing home Wii Bowling.
We can all sleep well knowing that our representatives take this responsibility so seriously...
well said, JA3. I was watching CSPAN a couple weeks ago and there was some sort of committee review that was asking questions to Senator Robert Byrd. There was some sort of of craziness happening during a vote for an agricultural bill and Sen. Byrd was improperly chewing out the person who collects the votes. I guess it was a pretty ugly scene. I don't know much about Sen. Byrd, but he certainly seems like a cooky guy to me.
