Bryson Crash Reveals Threat of Headless Government 308
Hugh Pickens writes "According to Business Week, the traffic accident that left U.S. Commerce Secretary John Bryson unconscious and alone in his bashed-up Lexus on June 9 raises questions about why the 10th official in line to succeed the president was left so vulnerable. It also highlights potential gaps in security for senior U.S. government officials, who receive varying levels of protection. 'They lost track of him,' says James Carafano, a terrorism scholar at the Heritage Foundation. 'Post 9/11, that's a bit of a head scratcher.' Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who are high in the line of succession and have national-security responsibilities, are provided protection 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but other federal officials, even in cabinet-level positions or other top posts, often travel without the security details that even a big-city mayor or state governor would be provided. Threats to cabinet-level officials aren't overblown, says Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, who has urged that the government revamp its succession plans and says a nuclear bomb hidden in a suitcase detonated in Washington could leave a headless government. 'The lack of interest in continuity may stem from the same reasons some smart people refuse to create wills, even though failure to do so leaves behind horrific messes for their loved ones,' writes Ornstein. 'Yet the threat is real. Our leaders' failure to establish plans to ensure that our Constitution survives is irresponsible.'"
Re:Really 10th in line? (Score:5, Informative)
Ya really. Aside from cabinet officials, you then have members of both legislative houses, theoretically the courts etc. Even the military.
It's not like leadership wouldn't emerge, and if enough top level people just got killed you're mostly banking on whomever takes over to actually go ahead and still have future elections and so on, regardless of how exactly succession officially works.
If you start spending huge amounts of money protecting every member of congress, every member of the senate, every senior cabinet member every assistant cabinet secretary, the courts, and then all of their immediate families etc. etc. etc. you're starting to look at billions of spending, and you start getting into serious questions about their ability to live lives relatively normally in fear of rare events.
Sure a nuclear bomb blowing up a capital city (london paris washington etc.) would be more than a little problematic, but in that situation you can't even assume that the 2nd person in line to the throne/presidency is going to still have their mental faculties even if they are otherwise alive and physically uninjured. In that case someone will have to improvise leadership until order can be restored, assuming such a concept is even still relevant.
Re:Really 10th in line? (Score:5, Informative)
We have a ridiculously long line of succession that we shouldn't be worried.
President
VP
Speaker of the House
President Pro Tem of the Senate
15 cabinet secretaries, starting with the Secretary of State
Really, you just need to protect the top 3-4, unless there's a particular threat to another one (Clinton as SoS gets special protection as a former first lady, for example). It would be nearly impossible to knock out the first 20. And if they did, the House would immediately elect a new Speaker, who would be elevated to president by being speaker. So really after that you get all the ranking members of the majority party. It's not worth worrying about.
Re:Nuking the Capital would destroy the government (Score:5, Informative)
Really? Has no one really thought of that before?
The problem with this is that most of the major officials are ELECTED. Unless we want to double the cost of running the government by electing understudies, that would mean the government would be left in the hands of unelected bureaucrats
Sorry, but you're incorrect. Only the top 3 are elected......all the others in line are unelected cabinet members.
US Presidential Line of Succession:
1 Vice President of the United States
2 Speaker of the House
3 President pro tempore of the Senate
4 Secretary of State
5 Secretary of the Treasury
6 Secretary of Defense
7 Attorney General
8 Secretary of the Interior
9 Secretary of Agriculture
10 Secretary of Commerce
11 Secretary of Labor
12 Secretary of Health and Human Services
13 Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
14 Secretary of Transportation
15 Secretary of Energy
16 Secretary of Education
17 Secretary of Veterans Affairs
18 Secretary of Homeland Security
Re:Really 10th in line? (Score:5, Informative)
There is a hardened bunker under the whitehouse. That's not exactly secret, but there are numerous others. There's a major centre in Pennsylvania, NORAD command etc.
The raven rock facility (in Pennsylvania but on the border with maryland) was revealed in 2004 as where cheney spent most of the latter bit of 2001 hiding out. Blame (sort of) time magazine for that one. I'm not sure it was actually much of a secret where the facility was.
Biden actually disclosed that there's a bunker in the vice presidents house in D.C. Which again, isn't a huge surprise. You'd have expected there to be bunkers of varying quality in official housing, and on various military bases and command and control centres.
Designated survivor (Score:2, Informative)
A designated survivor (or designated successor) is a member of the United States Cabinet who is appointed to be at a physically distant, secure, and undisclosed location.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Designated_survivor
Taken care of back in the 1940s. There's a plan. (Score:5, Informative)
Back in 1947, the present rules of presidential succession were set up. The present line of succession has 18 people. That ought to be enough.
When this is a real worry, a few of those people should be in a bunker. During presidential inaugurations and presidential speeches to Congress, that's actually done; at least one person in the line of succession is in a safe place far away. It's usually someone far down the list, but in 2001 Dick Cheney (VP) was sent to the "undisclosed location", and in 2003, Ashcroft (AG) got bunker duty. In 2005, 2006, and 2007, the president pro tem of the Senate went to the bunker. In 2009, Holder (the AG) got the duty. Since then, after most of a decade with no significant terrorist attacks, it's back to the low-rankers.
In terms of actual threat, nobody in the US presidential line of succession has ever been assassinated.
This is a problem for which a solution was implemented long ago, back when a major war looked like a likely possibility.
Re:Really 10th in line? (Score:4, Informative)
We do. That was the order I put down. VP, then Speaker, then President of the Senate, then the 15 cabinet heads in a special order. I forget the exact order, but the Secretary of State is first. That gives you 18 people to take over before there's any question, plus the bureaucracy and military chain of command will still be around to give orders to various departments. How many people in exact order do you need?
Re:Why would anyone care? (Score:4, Informative)
I agree that it's wrong to judge this idea based on your opinion of Heritage and AEI.
It is, however, quite appropriate to judge the AEI and Heritage based on the stupidity of ideas like this one.