Most 25th Amendment coverage by mainstream media is so ignorant it’s misleading
The Amendment can't be divorced from the fear-saturated Cold War era in which it was birthed
Most 25th Amendment coverage by the mainstream media is so ignorant it’s misleading.
While pundits and politicians alike regularly rely on the amendment to “sound the alarm,” as they call for the ouster of the President from the opposing party. That surface-level critique misses the culture out of which the amendment came to be.
What critics forget — or never knew… — is the nuclear backdrop of the 25th Amendment, because the legislation itself is a product of the fear-saturated Cold War era.
“We had to make sure there was always somebody who had his finger on the button,” then-Senator Birch Bayh — the only non-Founding Father who helped write two amendments that were added to the US Constitution — said when he was helping craft the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.
The Bayh episode is recounted by Dr. Rebecca @DrLubot in her timely history of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, Keeping a Finger on the Button: Presidential Continuity and the Nuclear Age.
The behind-the-scenes glimpse of negotiations surrounding the 25th Amendment reveals the rare addition to the Constitution was crafted in an age marked by the ever-present fear of nuclear annihilation.
While it’s an academic work, it’s an accessible read for congressional — & nuclear… — geeks. You can order a copy here.
That's so true. The 25th amendment process is a statement of fact, not politics as power redistribution. But then we're twisting and turning and rhetorically reinventing every constitutional provision these days, nothing is safe, not even "we the people"