There was quite a flurry of anguish in the stack of electronic mail yesterday. Last week everybody seemed to be on vacation, and the summer breeze was laden with moisture and seasonably warm. The crop of corn and barley are coming up in the fields, a joyful linkage between natural bounty and human engineering to produce something marvelous. The folks at Belmont Farm are working on their autumn advertising: “Field to Flask!” is a popular one that links nature to nutrition, of a sort. It was seasonal, sure, but something to look forward to.
Then came Monday. The chaotic exit from Afghanistan has a lot of the old military crowd stirred up. Some lived the equivalent experience from Saigon, and those memories remain painful though they had been mostly healed. Polling away from The Farm suggested a lot of people didn’t care, while a lot of other people seem to react strongly. Seems to go with the season.
As we had all been in government at one point or another, the Writers Section at Socotra House is divided but partially muted in response. This is a poignant topic for the crowd with a distinct age difference. The Interns are largely disassociated, have no Draft to worry about, and are taking things as they come. Some of the Old Salts are agitated because of roused memories, but even some of them are already on to the next set of issues and implications. I was working on those last week before SW Asia intruded on the conversation, which it seems to do periodically.
Trying to sort it out, an account of the passage from summer to autumn would start in the Recess of both chambers of the Congress. At the moment, no one is in town unless they have a helicopter, which is the opposite of some other world capitals. The Hill is devoid of daily spectacle until the House obeys it’s early recall on the 23rd. The Senate is not supposed to be back until after Labor Day, unless Senator Schumer summons his chamber back to deal with debt ceiling and budget issues, which were the looming crises last week before the latest one, which doesn’t seem to stack neatly with anything.
The President made it back to the White House for an appearance but took no questions and returned to Camp David immediately. The Press Secretary is on “long planned” vacation. The absence of the leadership team during this episode has been noticed, but the Section is not calling it a “crisis” since that dance card is already filled. Instead, our question was about the first noted calls to invoke the 25th Amendment and replace the President.
Since the Congress is on break, that would be up to someone, we are not sure whom, but it could be interesting. DeMille thankfully was able to sum it up in a manner that Loma and Rocket were able to agree. “We have a President. That is not open to controversy and January is past. Things should proceed in accordance with the Constitution. If the feeling is that he is not up to the rigors of the job at the moment, then there is a procedure in place to ensure legal change.”
“You keep going back to the way things are supposed to work even if they haven’t been done before. So, suppose Vice President Harris becomes President via the 25th Amendment? That leave a vacancy in the VP position, in which neither party has a tie-breaking vote in the Senate.”
“Well, doesn’t the Speaker of the House become VP? She is third in line to the top spot.”
“It is more complicated than that, since the Senate is tied, 50-50. There is no way to break a tie in order to confirm a replacement Vice President. It is not automatic. The system is essentially stuck, even if VP Harris assumes the Presidency.”
“Is that why people have been dumping on her lately? The polling complicates this even more.”
“Not complicated,” said DeMille. “They just have to find a Vice Presidential nominee who can be confirmed.”
“That would be a mess. How did we get in this situation?”
“The Democrat leadership is silent on that, but trust me, they have been thinking about this for a while. Mr. Biden was the nominee because he seemed like an old Centrist and people were likely to be comfortable with him. But at the moment, some of that confidence seems to be fraying.”
“There doesn’t seem to be a centrist alternative among the Democrats in D.C. right now. That has shaken public confidence at a moment when other stuff is bubbling hard. Inflation. The COVID thing, again. The collapse in Afghanistan. And the mid-terms coming up next year, with Virginia and New Jersey in play in just two months.”
“Don’t be depressing. Things will work out. No one has ruled Afghanistan for longer than about twenty minutes since Alexander the Great. Inflation might be a transitional issue. Everything is going to be OK.”
“Doesn’t it seem like we have done this before? Like when Nixon quit?”
“Only if you remember. It is easier if you don’t, which is why they are attacking Ron DeSantis already. I think we could do Jimmy Carter again. He may have had some issues, but we wound up with Reagan.”
There was some muttering about that, and no agreement on how the 25th Amendment works if there is no Vice President. We agreed that there wasn’t an answer any of us could come up with, though being a Tuesday, Belmont Farms has a tour and tasting until Happy Hour.
“Field to Flask!” said Rocket, but he scowled suddenly. ‘Unless they make us wear masks.” There was some empathetic nodding at that and we asked one of the Interns to find out about state policy. Then we settled down to the best of our limited capability. The best we could do was a decision to just move on, if anyone could find the keys to the truck. And who got to sit where there are seats.
It is one of those country things that sometimes looks just like Washington.
Copyright 2021 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com