History Forum / General / What If / March 2010

It is reasonably well-known that George Herbert Walker Bush was Acting
President for several hours on July 13, 1985 when President Reagan was
undergoing surgery for the removal of an intestinal polyp.  What is not as
widely known is that these hours may not have been quite as uneventful as
Bush later claimed--it appears that both Reagan *and* Bush may have been
unconscious for at least a few moments that day:

"Her [Dorothy Bush Koch's] new book, My Father, My President, chronicles
in tender and reverent tones the life and career of George H W Bush,
America's 41st president, based on his and her own memories, White House
files, and behind-the-scenes tales from colleagues, Secret Service agents,
world leaders, friends and family. 'Historians speak the truth as they
know it, but they don't live with presidents. Daughters do,' Mrs Bush Koch
told The Sunday Telegraph.

"Her revelations include how, on July 13, 1985, the world's leading
superpower appears to have been left without a leader--albeit for a matter
of 15 or so seconds.

"President Ronald Reagan had gone into hospital for surgery, meaning that
power had temporarily been transferred to his number two, Mr Bush, who
then embarked on a vigorous tennis match with friends.

"'What happened next was never reported at the time: Dad stumbled and fell
on his back, bumped his head and blacked out. The United States may have
been without any president at all for a few moments,' his daughter said."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1535214/Bushs-little-sister-finds-fame
-as-the-familys-fifth-Beatle.html

Actually, this was not a new revelation.  Jack Anderson had commented in a
column in early 1988:

"George Bush has already been president of the United States.  It says so
in his campaign biography.  The day was July 13, 1985, and for eight
hours, while Ronald Reagan was undergoing intestinal surgery, George Bush
was acting president.

"What the resume doesn't say is that during his eight hours at the top.
Bush slipped during a tennis game, banged his head and was out of
commission himself for part of the time Reagan was under anesthesia.

"'Out of commission' is the only way to reconcile disputed accounts of
this previously unreported incident.  Our sources, including high-level
White House officials, told Dale Van Atta that Bush was reportedly
'unconscious' for a time.  But a top Bush press aide said that he was
never 'incapacitated' though he did 'sleep it (the injury) off.'

"'On the day when Bush carried the ball for the president and the country,
he fumbled it,' said a White House source, familiar with the incident.

"The 'ball' he referred to is not figurative.  'Football' is the nickname
for the attache case and codes that allow the president to order a nuclear
retaliatory strike on the Soviet Union.  While Reagan was on the operating
table, Bush had the case and the codes...

"[Bush] later told reporters he passed the day reading and talking on the
telephone.  Nothing presidential happened.

"Nothing, that is, unless you're talking President Gerald Ford, the king
of the pratfalls. Sometime during the afternoon, while Bush was playing
tennis, 'he slipped and hit his head, but was not incapacitated,' a Bush
aide told us.  'It wasn't serious enough to be checked,' he said.  He
simply 'slept it off.'  Bush never mentioned the accident when he told the
press how he spent his day a the helm.

"A high-level White House official said that, at the time, Bush's people
confided to him by phone that 'while he (Bush) was commander-in-chief, he
was out playing tennis and he got knocked out.'

"Other sources, who also claimed Bush was unconscious, suggested that the
vice-president's aide who portrayed him as taking a snooze afterward was
not telling the whole truth..."

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1980&dat=19880201&id=koYiAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Rqo
FAAAAIBAJ&pg=3338,37500

OK, let our POD be that Bush was hurt much more seriously than in OTL:

(1) The most extreme situation:  The head injury kills Bush almost
instantly.  Reagan on awakening and learning of what happened to Bush,
himself dies of a sudden heart attack.  Less than a year after the
overwhelming GOP victory in the 1984 presidential race, a Democrat,
Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, becomes President...

(2) The head injury kills Bush, but Reagan, on awakening and being told of
it, does not have a heart attack.  Who does Reagan appoint as the new
Vice-President (Bob Dole?  Jack Kemp?  Howard Baker?  James Baker?)  and
how likely is whoever he appoints to become the GOP presidential nominee
in 1988?

(3) Bush is put in a coma which shows no sign of ending. The Twenty Fifth
Amendment provides a method for determining when a *President* is
disabled; it provides no such method for determining *vice-presidential*
disability.  See the discussion by  Akhil Reed Amar and Vikram David Amar
at http://hnn.us/articles/902.html :

"Even the Twenty-fifth Amendment, however, leaves some vital issues
unaddressed. For example, it provides no satisfactory mechanism for
determining *Vice-Presidential* disability. Given the health problems that
many of America's Vice Presidents have historically faced-indeed, given
the troubled medical history of Cheney himself--this is a serious
omission.

"Compounding the problem, if the Vice President ever were to be disabled
(or if the Vice Presidency were at any point vacant) the Twenty-Fifth
Amendment's elaborate machinery for determining Presidential disability
will seize up; much of the key decision-making under this Amendment pivots
on determinations that must be personally made by the Vice President...."

So let's say that distress over Bush's continuing failure to improve leads
to a severe deterioration of Reagan's own health, but he is unwilling or
unable to resign--and there is no Vice President capable of initiating the
25th Amendment process...  ("Whenever the Vice President and a majority of
either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such
other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro
tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives
their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the
powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately
assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President..."
http://topics.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxxv )

(4) Bush is in a coma, but Reagan's health is fine.  Reagan can't replace
Bush, since the office of Vice President is not vacant.  How does the 1988
GOP presidential race play out without a Vice President as a candidate?
Incidentally, does the fact that a person of the opposite party of the
President's is next in the line of presidential succession after the
comatose Bush lead Congress to rethink the Presidential Succesion Act of
1947?...

Thoughts?