Cyneheard: We need to cut the Speaker and Senate Pro Tem out of the line of succession.

folks gonna miss this from just the headline, but someone should point it out: the lack of live fact-checking by the moderators *was part of the agreement* by the campaigns. It's not just that CNN /didn't/ live fact check it. It's that they /weren't allowed to/.

Earlier this week, CNN's political director David Chalian said a debate “is not the ideal venue for a live fact-checking exercise." Moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash stuck to that model Thursday night, despite multiple falsehoods claimed during the debate.

CNN debate moderators didn’t fact-check. Not everyone is happy about it.www.washingtonpost.com CNN’s political director said earlier a presidential debate “is not the ideal venue for a live fact-checking exercise.” Jake Tapper and Dana Bash stuck to that.

I think the whole idea is overblown. The moderators shouldn’t “fact check” and argue back with the candidates. It’s not an interview. It’s not their role and they wouldn’t do a good job of it anyway. They did mostly fine. People just want somebody other than Biden to blame for how poorly it went.

FWIW I think the debate format /in general/ is pretty weak, and frankly voters would be far better served by the candidates doing long-form interviews by (ideally quite aggressive) interviewers

Been a while since I paid attention there, but the UK used to be really, really good at those type of "hostile interviews"

We should invent a version of Prime Minister’s questions

Yeah, hard to do without a parliamentary system

If we had a parliamentary system, worries about age would not be so bad, right? If the PM becomes too old, either everyone covers for her, or someone else becomes PM without waiting for 4 years.

Right. No confidence votes are reasonably common, and can be pretty quick, in parliamentary systems for very rapid no-election changes in leadership

Many systems have pretty established and speedy deputy PMs systems for indisposed, unreachable, or unavailable heads of government too so cabinet can continue to govern. People miss that cabinet government is key, The UK one seemed less than robust though... news.sky.com/story/domini...

Dominic Raab 'given five minutes' notice' to run country when Boris Johnson had COVID, inquiry hearsnews.sky.com Professor Dame Jenny Harries, who was deputy chief medical officer, also gave evidence - with messages showing her saying COVID patients would need to be discharged into care homes to stop the NHS get...

Honestly, the US system for this is probably one of the more robust

Like, tho VPs tend to do stuff to pass the time, and occasionally act on behalf of the US at foreign events or funerals etc, or to break ties in the Senate, essentially their only job is to be the person running the executive branch falls to if the President is incapacitated or dies

I like how John Adams attended the Senate every day. I’m not sure what he did, other than sit there in the presiding officer’s chair.

A jillion different reasons why it'd never be for me, but frankly that's what I'd do. Considerably more interesting than sitting around waiting for your friend and ticket-mate to drop dead

also it's actually useful for the President to have a very close colleague who really gets to live at the intersection of the legislature and the executive branch, and can carry real weight in both

America has a really robust succession system exactly one deep; after that it goes fucking insane

We need to cut the Speaker and Senate Pro Tem out of the line of succession.

I really don't love that you'd have a giant non-trivial question of eligibility barging in like the kool aid man in any national-crisis where you need to go 2+deep in the succession list

still think it should go VP->SecState->SecDef->highest ranking military official. Because if you're suddenly 5 deep in the succession list, the US is at war, and the military are running the show anyway

fuck no on that. No no no. No military in the chain of succession. It is so improbably so let's not politicize the military further. Keep them far away from the levers of power has been a good idea thus far.

Glad this was said clearly.

Open to just terminating the list at the end and leaving it implied. But mainly just SecState->SecDef, and if you want to be fancy, AmbNATO or smth to have someone who will by default be intentionally far away in a crisis. Or drop from SecDef down to governors

but the main thing is ProTem and Speaker should not be on the list at all

The history of the list is pretty wild.

Idk about that; I think the recent experience in crisis suggests military don’t really have any problem following the House Speaker, which I think is preferable to having them follow Mr Senior General or whatever.

Alternately-- farther down in the succession ladder, you start selecting for people who were passed over for promotions, lost elections etc, since clearly the people in charge before failed in their most important task

Hallo everyone, I know the entire cabinet, president, and VP are all dead, but I used to run the department of education and it is my job now to

like, ok, yes, great theory, great, love it, love the principle to civilian oversight here, buuuuuuuuuuut when you're 16-deep in the succession list the people running the show is the most senior surviving person in uniform, let's not beat around the bush on this

I see we've got hot takes about Battlestar Galactica twenty years later

Might that not also be solved by standing orders without actually giving them formal supreme power? Norway and Sweden both had a "poster on the wall" during the cold war

Commander Adama, is that you?

I think the design principle here is ‘let’s not make a mechanism that encourages a coup’

So say we all

Worked for her:

This is the pilot of Battlestar Galactica.

*24 countdown timer*

Battlestar Galactica, 2004.

Had to click into see if this thread was about Battlestar Galactica.

Being a fan of sortition, I see this as a big plus!

But not so close as to encourage coups d'etats

Call it the Al Haig Principle

Given recent history it could also mean the threatened H5N1 pandemic happens under a Republican administration that collectively decides they can own the libs by French-kissing an emu

You and Alexander Haig

We kind of got uncomfortably close to that in 1865.

What could go wrong?

I don't think you should ever to go to the highest ranking military official. Civilian oversight of the military is always appropriate, even in the most dire circumstances.

You're probably right, but the assumption was telling that to a military man might go "...well he'll I've got *six* bullets on me right now..." Pq

Yeah

gonna bang on my drum that Barack Obama is eligible to be elected vice president if you read the constitution carefully.

could even put him on the ballot at the top of the ticket too, tho I wouldn't recommend it

Why not? Didn't we already get a clear SCOTUS ruling that constitutional prohibitions on who can run for president are yucky and make their tummy hurt?

they were very clear that the right approach is that we should instead have a post-election constitutional crisis in Congress instead of deciding eligibility ahead of time like a normal country

Ridiculous. The Constitution says that the Vice-President must meet the qualifications for President. One of those is to not have already served the maximum permitted two terms.

Barack Obama meets the eligibility criteria to serve as president, which are set forth in article II. The 22nd amendment sets forth new eligibility criteria to be ELECTED president, not to serve as president. The VP needs to be eligible to serve as president, not to be elected as president.

You accurately showed the qualifications for President, as modified by the 22nd Amendment. Please see below from the 12th Amendment.

I think SBM is leaning into the technicality of "he'd be elected to /VP/ not to /P/, and so eligible under 22, and so eligible under 12" (but it's some verbal gymnastics to argue it, and I think the better argument is the meaning of 22, to the extent anyone cares about meaning these days, is no)

It’s not dumb, but it’s also just not the case that the interplay of Art II, the 12th Amdt, & the 22d Amdt is clear, so it goes to the Supreme Court, and if they say no it goes back to the states to see whether “Biden/Obama” ballots are valid, then that goes back to the S Ct, & none of this works.

“Should we allow six illegitimate life tenure Republican apparatchiks to void votes cast for politicians they dislike?” is a question whose answer would be “no” even if the legal principle involved was real and not fake

Those are words.

There’s a real question on whether they legally should be in the line of succession, but I don’t trust this Court or Congress to hash it out

It’s Ok If It’s A Republican seems like it would determine their verdict.

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