The Hill is reporting that Democratic House Rep Earl Blumenauer has introduced a bill that would have all living former Presidents and Vice Presidents, along with the current Vice President, be the ones to determine if the current President is fit for the office.
Per the article:
A House Democrat has introduced legislation to enhance the Constitution’s presidential removal procedures in response to concerns about President Trump’s behavior.
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) filed the bill during the House's two-week April recess to empower former presidents and vice presidents of both parties, in coordination with the sitting vice president, to determine if a president is fit for office.
“It is hard to imagine a better group to work with the vice president to examine whether the president is able to discharge the duties of the office. When there are questions about the president’s ability to fulfill his or her constitutional responsibilities, it is in the country’s best interest to have a mechanism in place that works effectively,” Blumenauer said in a statement.
Personally, I think this is an awesome idea, as there is no group better suited to make that determination than those who have done the job previously and know what it takes (sanity, for starters, not to mention a firm grasp of reality, which we KNOW Drumpster-Fire doesn’t have).
Further, Rep Blumenauer’s reasoning for the proposed bill is excellent (IMHO):
The [25th] amendment states that the vice president assumes the Oval Office in the event that a president is removed from office, dies or resigns.
Alternatively, the vice president and a majority of Cabinet officers can also jointly declare that a president is unfit to serve. The vice president would then take over as president in such a case.
In the event that a president refused to step down, two-thirds of both the House and Senate would have to vote to force the resignation.
But Blumenauer posited that the mechanism wouldn’t be effective if a mentally unstable president simply fired all the Cabinet members. He argued it’s also possible that Cabinet members might feel pressured to stand by the president in the polarized political environment despite their own personal misgivings.
(Emphasis mine)
He’s got a point, especially with the current cabal of extremists, lunatics and crooks that Drumpster-Fire has littered his cabinet with. Not to mention, we would never get a 2/3’s vote in either chamber with the GOP holding majorities. So his proposal takes the entire mess out of the polarized and ultra-partisan hands of both Congress and the current Cabinet, and puts it in the hands of the only people who have actually DONE the job.
I am liking this idea immensely!!