Except which party is in control of congress is up to the voters. They voted to elect the executive, which is now dead. Hence, who better than the head of the other group the voters elected ?

If they'd wanted a member of that party in the white hosue they'd ahve put him there. In your scenario they did not. So what you're talking about inviting is the ability of over-riding the wishes of the people with a bullet.

No matter how much you hate Pelosi, you must realise that as speaker, she has the support of an existing base of power

Well outside the point and not true anyway, just now. But we'll get to that part in another thread.

What you're missing here is where I say the parties in each case are not my argument; that a party change occurrs in the role of POTUS because of an assasination, is.

No, I'm suggesting that any policy that hands the white house to the party opposite, whichever way that goes, in the event of an assasination doesn't make much sense, since that would seem to raise the chances of such an assasination happening.

Except which party is in control of congress is up to the voters. They voted to elect the executive, which is now dead. Hence, who better than the head of the other group the voters elected ?

No matter how much you hate Pelosi, you must realise that as speaker, she has the support of an existing base of power.
Imagine what happens if the executive instead picks some random guy without this support.

You appear to be wanting to make general policy about succession during a crisis based on the specific example of the current Speaker (or past Speakers you didn't like). That doesn't make sense.

No, I'm suggesting that any policy that hands the white house to the party opposite, whichever way that goes, in the event of an assasination doesn't make much sense, since that would seem to raise the chances of such an assasination happening.

I suppose this policy lack to be a product of the founders views about parties in general, which they (I think Washington, particularly) referred to a the 'politics of faction'. They assumed that party lines wouldn't enter into it.

Anyway, I'm suggesting it does, and we'd better fix it, regardless of who has the White House.

Bithead:

You appear to be wanting to make general policy about succession during a crisis based on the specific example of the current Speaker (or past Speakers you didn't like). That doesn't make sense. Presumably you would have had a different opinion in say, oh, 1995 when Gingrich was Speaker and Clinton was President?

You can't make general rules about hypothetical situations based on which politicians you like or dislike.

I will say to the broader suggestion about the process made by James that I would prefer succession to the Speaker or President Pro Tempore in such a situation because at least they are constitutionally mandated offices, which offices like Secretary of State are not.

The issue of partisan affiliation at such a time is secondary (at best), it would seem to me.

I know, I know. I'm a bad liberal. But what's a guy got to do to get some common frickin' sense around here.

BTW this is an excellent comment system.

Suppose the worst happens, and the next terrorist attack hits Washington hard, taking out the president and the vice president. What happens next? New Yorker writer Jane Mayer's new book, The Dark Side, opens with a shocker. Apparently sometime in......

Think someone, or a group of someones who are capable of such acts, are incapable of murder for political advancement of the party?

Wow! Even for you that's out there.

for what the bill called "Armenian Genocide"

Do you disagree that it was indeed genocide as the scare quotes imply?

I'm not terribly troubled by the notion that a sudden sweep down the succession ranks to the Speaker or President Pro Tem might result in an instant change in the political party holding the White House.

I am.
Consider the attempt by Pelosi and company to pass a bill going after Turkey for what the bill called "Armenian Genocide" over 100 years before... just as we were trying to negotiate with Turkey for use of it's bases and for supply lines runing through Turkey to support our operations in Iraq. This could ahve only been labeled as political sabtage which would have resulted in a lot of our troops dying needlessly. Troops who do not get supplies they need, tend to do that, you know.

Consider the Demoxcrats... again Pelosi in the lead, dealing with FARC.. a known terrorist group, incidental to the congressional discussion about the free trade agreement with Columbia.

Think someone, or a group of someones who are capable of such acts, are incapable of murder for political advancement of the party? I don't. Why put a mechensim in place that will do nothing but give them that opportunity?

That's vastly more small-d democratic than elevating a political appointee of the President whose only broader connection to small-d democracy has come through the Senate's confirmation vote.

I'm not terribly troubled by the notion that a sudden sweep down the succession ranks to the Speaker or President Pro Tem might result in an instant change in the political party holding the White House. By definition, we're talking about a situation in which there has been a decapitation of our national leadership; if ever there is a time at which one may reasonably expect purely partisan concerns to drop into the background, at least for a while, it would be then. And that is also exactly the time at which political legitimacy — the sense that the government is still in the hands of someone actually elected by the people — is more important than ever.

To again pick up on the Al "I'm in Charge Here" Haig historical incident, what troubled so many about that was the notion that this ex-general might effectively be mounting, or simply tempted into, a coup d'état. Even if we were considering a cabinet secretary who doesn't have a military background (and it's no accident that quite a few Secretaries of State have indeed had them), cabinet secretaries are likely to be viewed by the public as having been chosen on a highly partisan basis, in which their democratic input has been fairly remote. Add in the possibility that we might have a President who'd won in the Electoral College but lost in the popular vote — which was exactly the case on September 11, 2001 — and the danger of the public feeling alienated and disenfranchised may become quite alarming.