EVENTS

Date:	Thursday, July 2, 2009
Time:	9:00 AM -- 12:00 PM
Location:	Wohlstetter Conference Center, Twelfth Floor, AEI 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036

WASHINGTON, JULY 2, 2009--At the unveiling of the AEI-Brookings Continuity of Government Commission's new report, "Preserving Our Institutions: Presidential Succession," John Feerick, a former dean of Fordham Law School who helped to compose the Twenty-fifth Amendment, lauded the report, calling its proposals "reasonable" and "creative."   The report offered seven recommendations for how to ameliorate the problems with the existing system of presidential succession, including extending the line of succession outside of Washington, D.C., and removing members of Congress from the line of succession. 

Keynote speaker Frances Townsend, former homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush, expressed frustration that too little attention is paid to continuity issues, especially as the country moves further away from the 9/11 attacks. She also summarized the major challenges facing the implementation of reforms to the current presidential succession system.  One of the challenges, Townsend explained, is creating a dialogue and coordinating continuity plans with the other branches of government; pushback from Congress, for example, has slowed progress in the area of continuity.  James Ho, solicitor general for the state of Texas, illustrated the challenges to reform by recounting a story from his time as Senator John Cornyn's chief counsel. Cornyn's office had proposed a nonbinding resolution advising outgoing presidents to confirm the incoming president's cabinet appointees prior to Inauguration Day, but Senator Ted Stevens put a hold on the resolution, because he was concerned that Cornyn's efforts would ultimately remove the president pro tempore of the Senate from the line of succession. Martin Frost, former congressman from Texas, explained that Congress has been unwilling to deal with continuity issues because congressmen of both parties seem to think that continuity issues are not worth their time and attention.

John Fortier, an AEI research fellow and the executive director of the Continuity of Government Commission, moderated a panel that examined the theory behind the current system of presidential succession, including its constitutional and legal basis. Afterward, the Brookings Institution's Thomas Mann, a senior counselor to the Continuity of Government Commission, moderated a panel that approached presidential succession issues from a more practical, real-world viewpoint. 

Several speakers pointed out problems with including members of Congress in the line of presidential succession. Yale Law School's Akhil Amar, participating via conference call, noted that the Twenty-fifth Amendment, which lays out explicit rules for the temporary transfer of presidential power, is designed to preserve a "party continuity," which may be violated if members of Congress remain part of the line of succession.   Similarly, Jamie Gorelick of WilmerHale dealt with the topic of continuity during her time as a member of the 9/11 Commission; she maintained that keeping members of Congress in the line of succession greatly increased the chances of "political intrigue," since it added the potential of party discontinuity. Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at AEI, reiterated the urgent need for reform, agreeing that members of Congress should be removed from the line of succession in order to erase the political parties' potential influence on succession.

In contrast, James Mann, a journalist and author-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, asserted that the existing system of presidential succession was not as flawed as the other panelists had described.  In fact, Mann told the audience he was troubled by the proposed provision in the Commission's report to set up new offices in the line of succession, as he believes this would create more problems than it would solve.

The AEI-Brookings Continuity of Government Commission, launched in the fall of 2002, facilitates studyand discussion of potential reforms to ensure that American governmental institutions would continue to function effectively in the event of a catastrophe.  The Commission released its first report on congressional continuity in 2003.

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