America’s Failed System of Presidential Succession

Eric Zuesse

America has had two Presidents who tower above all others in the esteem of historians, and they were Abraham Lincoln, who cut the Gordian knot of slavery in America, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), who started the introduction of democratic socialism (including his Social Security system) into this previously “Wild West” capitalist country, and got America into World War II early enough for America to dominate the post-War but late enough for America to have lost only 0.32% of its population killed in the War, as compared to UK’s 0.94% and USSR’s 13.7% (which was 25.3% dead in Belarus, 16.3% in Ukraine, 12.7% in Russia, and generally less in the other ten of the USSR’s Republics). Although the USSR’s leader Stalin was overwhelmingly the leader who won WW II (and both FDR and Churchill privately said so), FDR set America up to dominate the post-War world as-if this had mainly been America’s win. FDR also created the U.N. and set America up to dominate the creation of the U.N.’s constitution or Charter. However, FDR’s new (in FDR’s 4th term) V.P., Harry Truman, became FDR’s successor when FDR died on 12 April 1945, and Truman reversed FDR’s central objective of prohibiting and terminating all imperialism in the post-War world, including FDR’s plans for that anti-imperialism to be included in the U.N.’s Charter (which inclusion didn’t happen, because of Truman’s rejecting anti-imperialism and turning out to be pro-U.S.-imperialism); and, so, the post-War world has been Truman’s world: U.S. hegemony, instead of FDR’s goal: ending all imperialism. On 25 July 1945, Truman started the Cold War in order for the U.S. to take over the entire world: he trashed virtually all of FDR’s post-WW-II intentions, and, within less than two years, replaced all of FDR’s Cabinet and advisors by persons who comported with Truman’s aim for the U.S. ultimately to control all nations. He started America’s “standing army” and military-industrial complex (which his personal hero, the slick deceiver Dwight Eisenhower, had inspired him to start, and then, when he became Truman’s immediate successor, built up even more).

As regards Lincoln, he died on 15 April 1865 via an assassination by a Confederate-pro-slavery fanatic and was succeeded by Lincoln’s new (2nd term) V.P. Andrew Johnson, whose plan to end the war as fast as possible ignored the needs of the slaves and appealed only to southerners and northern conservatives. Johnson failed to win the election of 1868, and therefore didn’t get to produce as much long-term damage as Truman did. (However, historians rate Truman higher than Andrew Johnson because they live in the world that Truman had created.)

So: In both instances, the great President was followed by his new V.P., and in both cases, that V.P. was the antithesis of what had caused his immediate predecessor to have been a great President.

A good argument can be made that America’s worst-ever presidents were Truman and (Andrew) Johnson, and that America’s greatest Presidents were FDR  and Lincoln — in each case, they came immediately after one of America’s two greatest Presidents. They weren’t merely worse than their immediate predecessor had been: they were his exact opposite.

Those two extreme instances of catastrophic failure in the existing Presidential-succession system in the U.S. argue for fundamentally replacing it, because, in each of these two instances, an appointed Vice Presidential running-mate took over from one of America’s two greatest Presidents at the very end of that President’s successful and historically mega-significant war, and that very great President had waged that war with a clear and radical or even revolutionarily constructive and necessary objective, and that successor-President turned 180 degrees opposite to his immediate predecessor’s revolutionarily constructive and necessary objective, and basically undid his predecessor’s very great achievement and objective. In each of these two cases, the immediate successor undid the greatest achievement of one of America’s two greatest Presidents. This reversal is so extreme so that one could hardly imagine a more extreme turn-around from top-of-the-line great, to bottom-of-the-barrel atrocious.

A nation’s system of appointing a new leader who replaces a leader whose service has been unpredictably and suddenly terminated, is of crucial importance to determining the quality of that nation’s system of government. It might even be far more significant than whether the nation is a democracy or a dictatorship. (Truman started dictatorship in and by America, by handing its Government over to what his hero and immediate successor subsequently named “the military-industrial complex.”) In both of those mentioned cases, the course and direction of the Government was exactly reversed by America’s catastrophically failed system of Presidential succession.

I therefore propose that in America the President needs to secretly appoint, at least one time each year (so as to make the choice current), whom his/her successor will be if that President becomes unpredictably and involuntarily removed from office. No one must know whom has been the most recently selected, not even the person who has been selected, because no one else’s preferences than the President’s should determine that choice, and because all persons who might possibly be selected ought to be constantly trying to impress favorably the existing, elected, President, and because the secrecy of the President’s choice will serve as a deterrent to assassinating any President, because no assassin would then be able to know whom that President’s successor would turn out to be. This is crucial: Presidential succession is crucial — and the U.S. Constitution got it terribly wrong, so it needs to be Amended on this.

ALSO: doing it this way would eliminate the existing farcical office of America’s Vice Presidency, a useless office that serves only to “balance a ticket” — which forces each U.S. Presidential nominee to choose, as his/her V.P., someone who is appealing to that Presidential candidate’s political enemies. (That’s what “balancing a ticket” actually means.) (In Lincoln’s case, the ticket was balanced so as to be less offensive to the former slave-owners; in FDR’s, it was balanced so as to be less offensive to America’s billionaires.) Indeed, Truman was forced upon FDR in order for FDR to be able to hold the donor-support of the Democratic Party’s top funders, so as to have a chance of being re-elected in the system existing at that time — which has become even more controlled by the aristocracy since that time (1944). America’s super-rich should have had no such power to determine ahead-of-time whom FDR’s successor would be if he were to become unpredictably replaced before his term ended. And the entire office of the Vice Presidency is a curse to the nation and must be abolished.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.