Customer Reviews

Line of Succession

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This book, written about thirty years ago, is an action-adventure novel dealing with issues of presidential succession and disability. The book raises issues that could easily arise today, probably (but not necessarily) in a less dramatic context. The vice-president and speaker are killed in a terrorist attack, the president-elect is kidnapped then killed, and the president pro tem is politically unacceptable to both political parties, so the defeated outgoing president schemes to amend the Presidential Succession Act so that he can stay in office instead of handing over power. (The book sidesteps a potential problem with the twenty-second amendment because the outgoing president has served only one term.) The action is plausible, and the author correctly applies the relevant constitutional and legal provisions without letting them get in the story's way. A good, fast, provocative read that, even after thirty years, requires little suspension of disbelief.