The 45 Presidents of the US so far have had at least one common flaw. They’ve all been human beings, and subject to the human weaknesses of death, injury, disease, and insanity. The Founders provided for a President’s death, but death is less ambiguous than disease, injury, and insanity. The 25th Amendment filled this gap in 1967. Three of its four sections have been invoked with either the death or consent of the President but the fourth, which removes a President unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office, has not. Current events have prompted deeper consideration of the 25th along two lines… could the 25th remove any mentally incapacitated President, and should it be used to remove Donald Trump?
The 25th Amendment
Let’s start with a primer on the 25th Amendment itself. The actual text is here, and you can find a video explainer here, but its four sections boil down to this…
- VP becomes President if the President dies or is removed from office
- If VP office is vacant, the President nominates a VP candidate for Congressional confirmation
- If the President is temporarily impaired, he can transfer power to the VP as Acting President for the duration of the impairment
- If the VP and a “…majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide…” (taken to mean 13 of the 24 Cabinet Officers) decide the President is impaired, they can tell Congress and the VP will immediately become Acting President
- The President can tell Congress when he feels “no inability exists” and he’ll be returned to office
- The VP (and Cabinet) have four days to dispute
- In the event of a dispute, Congress has 21 days to settle the matter
Section 1 clarifies the original Presidential Succession in Article II of the Constitution. When Harrison died in office his VP stepped up, but there was a question as to whether he “became President” or just got the “powers and duties” of the President.
Section 2 fills a gap in the Constitution which didn’t provide a mechanism to fill a VP vacancy. Prior to the 25th the VP office was unoccupied over 20% of the time through death, resignation, or ascension to the Presidency.
Section 3 allows an Acting President to step in for temporary impairments. With the advent of nuclear weapons requiring a response within minutes, it became clear that the US needed a conscious and capable President 24/7/365. Presidents Reagan and Bush (the elder) used this provision when they were medically incapacitated.
Section 4, providing a procedure for an impaired President who cannot or will not step aside, has never been implemented.
The 25th Amendment in general application
Long before considering using the 25th Amendment on ANY individual President, we should look deeper at the amendment itself and how it could theoretically work. President X could be impaired for any number of reasons, but who determines “impairment” and what standards should they use? Is it left to the discretion of the VP and Cabinet to employ the 25th, or are they obligated to use it if/when they see impairment? The potential for political abuse by a president’s adversaries is obvious, but what about the potential for abuse by the president’s allies? Is it even possible to remove political motivations from the equation at all? What about the very human motivations of the people around the president… we’ve seen presidents shielded from press and politics by families and aides with the best of, or at least understandable, intentions. When does the interest of the Country override the interest of the family or even the President himself?
Washington’s Growing Obsession: The 25th Amendment, by Annie Karni in Politico, Jan 2018
25th Amendment: How Do We Decide Whether The President Is Competent? By Elaine Kamarck at Brookings, Jan 2018
The 25th Amendment Makes Presidential Disability a Political Question, Jeffrey Rosen in The Atlantic, May 2017
Why Congress Won’t Touch the 25th Amendment by David Hawkings on RollCall, Jan 2018
Removing A President Using The 25th Amendment Would Require A Political Apocalypse, by Byron Wolf on CNN, Jan 2018
How To Remove The President With The 25th Amendment, video from “Madam Secretary”, Jan 2018
Is Donald Trump, specifically, impaired?
Just considered in a vacuum, the 25th Amendment raises fascinating questions. A prudent society might consider answering those questions before they become more than just academic matters. But of course, the current interest in the 25th Amendment is because many people think it’s already too late.
Is Donald Trump insane? Here we don’t mean has he implemented ridiculous policies, or has he violated social norms, or does he hold fringe beliefs, but is he clinically insane? Does he meet the 25th Amendment standard for “impairment”? Actual insanity is no longer a psychiatric definition but a legal one used in evaluating a defendant’s ability to determine right from wrong when a crime is committed. The legal definition is
Insanity. n. mental illness of such a severe nature that a person cannot distinguish fantasy from reality, cannot conduct her/his affairs due to psychosis, or is subject to uncontrollable impulsive behavior.
Again we ask, is Donald Trump insane? Many people considering Trump’s behavior in light of the above definition might justifiably say yes, but the opinion of regular citizens far from the day-to-day functioning of Donald Trump hardly matters. Psychiatric professionals evaluating his behavior from afar might have a better claim of legitimacy, but even they will tell you that a remote evaluation is not the same as a diagnosis. Still the question lingers… is Trump insane?
The most honest answer is we’ll never know for sure. Even if there were a battery of psychiatric experts examining Donald Trump in a clinical setting, we still wouldn’t know. (See sidebar on The Rosenhan Experiment below) There is no “insanity test”, no blood test to detect delusion, no way to know absolutely for sure that Trump or anyone else is crazy. But just like with anyone else, we can draw tentative conclusions based on available information, and make an informed judgement we can act on. Many people, faced with the daily evidence of Trump’s behavior, have tried to do just that…
We’re Psychiatrists. It’s Our Job To Question The President’s Mental State, by Lee and Glass in Politico, Jan 2018
The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President, Lee, Lifton, et al, Oct 2017
Is Something Neurologically Wrong With Donald Trump? By James Hamblin in The Atlantic, Jan 2018
‘Competent’ Or ‘Crazy’ Misses The Point Of Presidential Mental Health, by Sanjay Gupta on CNN, Jan 2018
What Would It Look Like, Hypothetically, If A Public Figure Were Suffering The Symptoms Of Dementia? By Ashley Feinberg on on Deadspin, Feb 2017
This New Report On Trump’s State Of Mind Should Alarm You, by Greg Sargent in Washington Post, Mar 2018
Why Trump Needs A Cognitive Exam: It Should Be Standard Practice For Any President, Especially A Senior Citizen, by Gartner, Buser, and Reiss in NY Daily News, Jan 2018
Trump And The 25th Amendment: Why It Was Written And What It Can’t Do by Petula Dvorak in The Washington Post, Jan 2018
Book: Aides Label Trump’s Behavior ‘Defiance Disorder’, by Mallory Shelbourne in The Hill, Jan 2018
Leaks Suggest Trump’s Own Team Is Alarmed By His Conduct, by Date and WIlkie on Huffpost, Feb 2017
Book: Trump’s Brain (Paperback): An FBI Profile of Donald Trump: Predicting Trump’s Actions and Presidency, by Decker, Jan 2017
Why the 25th Amendment Doesn’t Apply to Trump—No Matter What He Tweets, by Joshua Zeitz in Politico, Jan 2018
The 25th Amendment Proves Why Trump’s Mental Health Matters, by Painter and Watt on NBC Think, Oct 2017
Movie: Duty To Warn “Experts discuss why President Trump is psychologically unfit to serve the country, how he is dangerous, and why this is not a partisan matter, but, rather, a patriotic defense of democracy and our citizens.”
So there you go. Our President is arguably insane and the Constitution provides a mechanism for removing impaired Presidents. But those two points aren’t enough to remove Trump because the Constitution’s checks and balances rely on the good intentions of people in power. The evidence to this point indicates the Republicans who currently control all levers of power are willing to keep an insane person in the President’s chair, knowing the immediate and long-term dangers to the country, rather than risk diminishing the power they have. And Trump’s base, far from disagreeing about the madness of the King, are reduced to saying we just have to live with him as though he were the weather.
The President of the United States is crazy, but hey… whatcha gonna do?
The Rosenhan Experiment(from Wikipedia) The Rosenhan experiment was conducted to determine the validity of psychiatric diagnosis. The study was done in two parts. The first involved the use of five healthy associates or “pseudopatients” who briefly feigned auditory hallucinations in an attempt to gain admission to 12 psychiatric hospitals in five states in the United States. All were admitted and diagnosed with psychiatric disorders. After admission, the pseudopatients acted normally and told staff they felt fine and no longer experienced any hallucinations. All were forced to admit to having a mental illness and had to agree to take antipsychotic drugs as a condition of their release. The average time that the patients spent in the hospital was 19 days. All but one were diagnosed with schizophrenia “in remission” before their release. The second part of the study involved an offended hospital administration challenging Rosenhan to send pseudopatients to its facility, which its staff would then detect. Rosenhan agreed and in the following weeks out of 250 new patients the staff identified 41 as potential pseudopatients, with 2 of these receiving suspicion from at least one psychiatrist and one other staff member. In fact, Rosenhan had sent no pseudopatients to the hospital. See also “Ten Days in a Madhouse: The Woman Who Got Herself Committed” about Nellie Bly’s research in 1887. |
