Madame Secretary and the 25th Amendment

The popular TV show Madame Secretary addressed this issue last night and it was a thinly veiled commentary on our current Presidunce. In the show the President starts acting belligerent, threatening Russia with possible war. This is not how the Pres typically acts and he is approached by The Secretary of State (SOS) and others, gingerly inquiring if something is wrong. The Pres just gets more belligerent with those around him and orders a strike on Russian satellites, sure to cause war. It gets so bad that the Cabinet has a meeting a vote to invoke section 4 of the 25th Amendment to remove the Pres for incapacity. However, the SOS tells the Pres if he is willing to get a medical exam and temporarily step down until he's better she will send the order over to Congress for ratification. The Pres relents and it turns out he has a brain tumor that is indeed impairing him and gets the surgery, taking temporary medical leave from his office.


The parallels to Dump's case are striking. Only in this case the Cabinet doesn't have the guts or any patriotic concern for the country so they will never make this move. That Dump is mentally incapacitated is obvious, given the book by 57 psychiatrists vowing to that effect as well as the many, daily actions of the Dunce himself. The TV show is fiction after all, but it does present us with how a functioning government should work in our system, laying shame on all those in the Cabinet and the Congress who not only tolerate the Dump but actively seek to defend him by making excuses for their own ideological power plays.