Brent Colton is a retired CIA operations officer now in the employ of the Creighton Corporation, a privately owned think tank that advocates various opinions on world issues, but it’s his clandestine job to solve the dirty problems for their private clients for a million dollar fee with no questions asked. When recovering stolen technology from a Vietnamese industrialist, Colton obtains evidence that he secretly partnered with a U.S. Senatorto rig the recent presidential election and elect him to the nation’s highest office.

TAKING THE OATH OF HIGH OFFICE AT YOUR OWN RISK!
by Terry Heath, 2006

You know you’re getting old when you can remember that the birthday anniversaries of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were once celebrated on their particular birth dates in February. But the two federal holidays were combined into a single event a few years back to be called President’s Day where we Americans honor all forty-two men who have achieved that unique leadership position in United States history. So why would anyone want to take such a stressful job on one’s one well being?

All our presidents have been men of Caucasian extraction. Some were poor, yet most were rich and used that financial windfall to their political advantage to get to the White House. We’ve had two pairs of presidential father and sons; one set of grandfather and grandson and two were third cousins. Some were spectacular successes during their time in the political spotlight while others were considered failures. But occupying that job can be detrimental to that person’s physical and mental health.

Between 1788 and 2004 there have been 55 presidential elections held in the United States. Thirty-seven men have been elected as president. Fifteen of those won re-election to a second term with Franklin Roosevelt also winning a third and fourth. Nine elected presidents were defeated for re-election with Grover Cleveland subsequently winning a non-consecutive second term four years after losing re-election.

Eight presidents have died in office, all having been elected. One president, Richard Nixon, resigned from office in a political scandal. Four who died were of natural causes while the other four died at the hands of an assassin.

Four of the vice-presidents who ascended to the presidency following the death of the elected officeholder were subsequently not nominated for another term by their political party. They were Tyler, Fillmore, Arthur and Andrew Johnson and all were from the 19th century. The other four, Theodore Roosevelt, Coolidge, Truman and Lyndon Johnson, were nominated by their party for a subsequent full term and they won, coincidentally all in the 20th century. The only other president to ascend into office was Gerald Ford who became president upon the resignation of Nixon. He was subsequently defeated for election to a full term.

One interesting fact is that during the timeframe of 1789 to 1967 before the 25th Amendment to the Constitution was approved to allow the appointment by Congress of a vice-president if that office becomes vacant upon the death of that official or the ascension of the officeholder to the presidency upon the death or removal of that politician is that seven vice-presidents also died in office and two others resigned.

So 17 of the 55 presidential terms have been interrupted by death or resignation by at least one of the two men on the ticket. We are left to conclude that 17 of 37 presidential administrations that were elected by the citizens of this nation had at least one death or resignation of the two men on that political ticket. That is almost half of them! And with nine of the 37 men elected as president either dying or resigning that means there’s over a twenty percent turnover rate just in that one job. Talk about work stress!

When the Constitution was written in 1787 everyone participating in that process knew that the first president of our original thirteen states was going to be George Washington. He wisely decided to step down after serving two full terms as chief executive because he knew his days were numbered and didn’t want to die in office. But the Founding Fathers would have no way of knowing how the influence of that office was to increase over the next two centuries and how those there would cope with the pressure of having that position.

What does the Constitution say are the requirements to be president? Only that a person should be a natural born citizen, at least thirty-five years old and has been a resident in this country for at least fourteen years. That’s it. There’s no physical or mental test we can give an applicant to see if they are up to the job. So what can the nation do if the officeholder becomes unable to rule because of his health?

The 25th Amendment has attempted to address concerns if the officeholder becomes unfit to serve. Section Three of the amendment states that a president can voluntarily and temporarily relinquish his authority as the nation’s leader if he feels he is unable to perform his duties. If he is unwilling to do that and becomes a threat to our nation’s security then the Section Four clause says that the vice-president and a majority of the cabinet can issue a written declaration that they believe the president cannot currently fulfill his obligations and can be temporarily removed from office. But obviously that declaration has never been tested in these last forty years.

Physical and mental illnesses happens to all of us. But what do we do if it happens to our president? What is a president’s obligation to the citizens if his own physical and mental health becomes an obvious issue to his ability to govern? Continue to do the will of the people as he sees fit or step aside for the nation’s sake?

Four presidents had major health problems during their time in office just in the last century. Woodrow Wilson suffered a major stroke in the fall of 1919 and was incognito for the last 18 months of his second term and the rumor was that his wife made many of the decisions required of the chief executive in the aftermath of World War One. Franklin Roosevelt suffered from polio and was confined to a wheelchair which was not reported to the public. He was in obvious poor health during his 1944 re-election campaign yet that information was not revealed to the voters. He subsequently died twelve weeks into that final term.

Dwight Eisenhower suffered a heart attack in his first term and endured a minor stroke in his second. Ronald Reagan spent two months of his first term in convalescence after being wounded in an assassination attempt. Health problems resulting from the aging progress continued during his time in office that required time away from his full-time duties as leader.

But the 1963-69 presidency of Lyndon Johnson best exemplifies the physical and mental stress of being in high national office and how it can adversely affect the wrong person getting the job.

Johnson was a very powerful Texan congressman and senator who languished for two and a half years as an ignored vice-president under John Kennedy and was presumed to stay there in obscurity until an assassin’s bullet put him in the Oval Office in November, 1963. But his five years in that setting were not happy ones for a man who craved ultimate power and the pleasing of others so he exited the presidency in January, 1969 as a broken individual from the stressful effects of being our chief executive.

A 2002 book written by D. Jablow Hershman entitled ‘Power Beyond Reason’ makes the medical claim that LBJ suffered from bipolar disorder and the highs and lows of life that he endured and brought onto himself were commonplace during his tenure as this nation’s 36th president.

The author states that LBJ would be overtly elated one day, yet depressed the next. He was excited to get the 1964 Democratic Party presidential nomination for his re-election, then convinced himself that he was not up to the job so ordered his speech writer to prepare an address in which he turns it down. However, by the following day he was back to liking the job and looking forward to the presidential campaign against Barry Goldwater and told his staff that he would accept the nomination. Apparently he acted that dual way his entire life.

He was at his all-time high in January, 1965 upon taking his second oath of office, this time for a full term in a landslide national victory. Yet, within a few weeks of that second inaugural, his elation came crashing down once the war in Vietnam began to spiral out of control. He realized within a few weeks of authorizing the sending of troops to Vietnam that the conflict there was not winnable, yet kept approving the requests of additional soldiers to that southeast Asian country. Johnson would ask his military advisors for their advice on how to win the war, then scream at them that they wished to start World War Three under his watch when they told him what realistically needed to be done to win.

What recourse do we have if a president becomes truly mentally ill? Lincoln suffered major bouts of depression during his tenure yet managed to keep that from his advisors and the public. There were concerns about the mental well being of Richard Nixon and his ability to govern the nation at the height of the Watergate scandal that cost him his presidency but even he never crumbled under the pressures and knew when it was time to leave office. So, fortunately for us and the world, we’ve never had a true madman in the White House. What will we do if that ever happens?

Terry Heath California E-Mail readermail@terryheathbooks.com