Tweet-Stop and the 25th Amendment

 

We’ve been here before. “In the fall of 1918, as President Woodrow Wilson scrambled to end World War I, the flu pandemic began its lethal march across the country, killing at least 675,000 Americans over the next two years.” Washington Post, September 4th. Under the guise of not wanting negatively to impact military morale or foment panic, Wilson and the US government (and those of every WWI ally) banned any open discussion of a pandemic, one that was virulent and exceptionally dangerous. Sound familiar? One of the reasons we call it the “Spanish Flu” – even though it seems to have originated on a pig farm in Kansas – is because Spain was a neutral during the war and thus not bound by the ban. Its press actively wrote about the flu, so the rest of the world wrongfully assumed that the virus begun in Spain. 

The oddity of that 1918 pandemic continued. Wilson, a strong advocate of treating the defeated Germans with dignity and becoming the champion of forming the League of Nations, was heading to France to participate in the 1919 negotiation of the infamous Treaty of Versailles (the Paris Peace Conference). “In April 1919, Wilson traveled to the Paris Peace Conference for talks on ending the Great War. Soon after arriving, the president become ill with a fever and violent fits of coughing that left him nearly unable to breathe. 

“Wilson's condition deteriorated so quickly that his personal doctor, Cary T. Grayson, thought he had been poisoned… ‘But it soon became obvious the diagnosis was simpler, if only marginally more reassuring,’ wrote John Barry in ‘The Great Influenza.’ 

“Wilson was so ill that the talks were nearly derailed. The president could not even sit up in bed… In a hand-delivered letter to Wilson’s chief of staff back in Washington, Grayson wrote that the night Wilson became ill ‘was one of the worst through which I have ever passed. I was able to control the spasms of coughing but his condition looked very serious.’” The Post. 

Wilson recovered but was impaired, apparently also having suffered a related stroke. He babbled incoherently, had to be redirected as he seemed to walk off in random directions. The net result is that none of Wilson’s goals for the peace accord were realized; he was not up to it. France stepped in and dominated the treaty terms. The allies then adopted a most punitive treaty, extracted exorbitant reparations from Germany, and the League of Nations fizzled. Many believe that had those treaty terms not been so harsh, Adolph Hitler would never have risen to power. 

Wilson’s order against talking about the flu and the lack of transparency about the severity and extent of the pandemic are believed to have accelerated the infection and fatality rate well-beyond what it should have been. It took two more years, and massive additional infections, for that cherished herd immunity to kick in. Masks and social distancing, had there been a plan, would have vastly reduced the extent of the casualties, particularly important since the science of cure and vaccination was still fairly primitive back then. A weakened Wilson died a year after his term. 

Now, we are informed that President Trump and his wife Melania tested positive for COVID-19. His last tweet, reproduced above, was followed by an uncanny cessation of his normal tweetstorms. Ambiguous White House statements seem to mirror the ban Wilson imposed on discussing his own bout with the Spanish Flu. We are told that the President is working out of a presidential office at Walter Reed National Military Center. Given the realities of the election, the controversies over appropriations as well as the hearings over the President’s nominee to the Supreme Court, the nation is clearly entitled to massive transparency. I hope no one wishes anything but a full recovery for the President – who is experiencing “mild symptoms” according to those ambiguous reports – but we live in perilous times where getting the truth remains a central focus. We need to know. 

Trump’s credibility track record has given rise to several left-wing conspiracy theories, including one that the President is not COVID positive and will resurface looking unscathed telling the world that the disease is, as he said earlier, just a minor inconvenience. “Researchers at Cornell University published a study this week showing that Mr. Trump was the single largest driver of false and misleading information about the coronavirus. Mentions of Mr. Trump made up nearly 38 percent of the overall ‘misinformation conversation,’ the researchers said… Mr. Trump has also stated on at least 34 separate occasions since February that the coronavirus would go away… 

“The situation has created ‘the perfect storm for people to assume that the White House isn’t being truthful,’ [said Melissa Ryan, chief executive of Card Strategies, a consulting firm that researches disinformation].” New York Times, October 2nd. Perhaps more detailed transparency will blow that toxic theory out of the water. There are also tweets everywhere reflecting schadenfreude, and for those with nastier wishes: “Twitter said it will suspend users who openly use the platform to express hope that President Donald Trump dies from his ongoing battle with COVID-19.” Variety, October 2nd. Regardless of our differences, we should all hope for a medical recovery for Mr. Trump. 

There are, however, still some very serious questions we must face. What happens if… Vice President Mike Pence and his wife tested negative for the virus, and the President has the ability to transfer his presidential power to Pence at any time (and take it back when he is sufficiently recovered) under the 25th Amendment to the Constitution. And we know what happens if the President passes during his active term or after the election but before inauguration day. 

Meanwhile, will the debates be cancelled? What happens if the President cannot govern at all, or, worse, if he succumbs to the disease before the election? Who becomes the GOP nominee? “Each party’s committee, the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee, has the authority to reconvene its members (the RNC has 168 and the DNC has 447) and pick a new nominee. But with time so short before the election, there would be little likelihood of them picking anyone other than Trump’s and Biden’s running mates: Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris, respectively. 

“The problem is that each state has already printed out its ballots, and in fact more than 2.2 million Americans have already voted. Untold millions of ballots have also already been mailed to voters across the country… In other words, the horse appears to be out of the barn when it comes to the candidates on the ballot. There’s no reprinting them. 

“If either Trump or Biden were incapacitated or died, voters would likely go to the polls or send in their mail ballots and use Trump’s or Biden’s name as a proxy for the vice presidential candidates, meaning to signal their support for Pence or Harris.” Yahoo! News, October 2nd. It would be a shame to end the election this way. Not only should both candidates be strong and able to voice their policies and platforms, but the American public really needs to be able to cast it election choice to reflect a clear statement about their desire for the future of the country. This should not be a “default” vote.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and in this strangest of all political moments in American history, things got so much stranger.