Is the Twenty-fifth Amendment Really an Option?

"Feerick was summoned to Washington to start writing what would become the Twenty-fifth. 'I had to ask the law firm if they would pay me to stay overnight and take a train or plane down there,' he remembered. 'I mean, I had no money. My parents were immigrants.'"

"Among the twelve people enlisted to work on the amendment, Feerick was the expert on Presidential vacancies. 'There were eight times when Presidents died in office and Vice-Presidents succeeded,' he said. Half of these deaths were assassinations."

"'An insane President would probably disagree with such a determination,' Feerick noted, emphasizing the challenges of defining incapacity in the context of the amendment."

Feerick was deeply affected by witnessing J.F.K. and Lyndon Johnson's involvement in politics. He was called to Washington to help draft the Twenty-fifth Amendment, focusing on presidential vacancies and incapacity. His expertise stemmed from historical instances of presidential deaths and the informal transfer of power during medical issues. The amendment allows the Vice-President and Cabinet to remove a President deemed unable to fulfill duties, a significant shift from previous practices where power was handed over voluntarily.

Read at The New Yorker