Professor John Feerick interviewed former Vice President Dan Quayle about how he planned with President George H.W. Bush for the possibility of Bush becoming incapacitated in office. Such situations are addressed by the 25th Amendment, which Feerick helped draft in the 1960s. Before Bush and Quayle, presidents and vice presidents did not engage in extensive planning for the amendment’s use.
An excerpt of the interview appears in Feerick’s new article in the Indiana Law Review on the history of presidential succession and impeachment. The article is adapted from a speech that Feerick gave at a symposium at the Indiana Statehouse in March 2018. The symposium focused on the six vice presidents who came from Indiana, including Quayle. Feerick observes in the article that all six were involved in or impacted by presidential succession or impeachment events.
The 25th Amendment’s principal sponsor, Senator Birch Bayh, was also from Indiana. Feerick used part of his speech to pay tribute to Bayh, who died in March. Speaking in the legislative chamber where Bayh served as Speaker, Feerick said Bayh “inspired [him]in the importance of a lawyer rendering public service.”
Implementing the amendment that Bayh and Feerick collaborated on was the subject of a meeting at the start of the Bush administration. Feerick asked Vice President Quayle about it in their interview.
Dan Quayle: The meeting was initiated by [White House Counsel] Boyden Gray. He served eight years as counsel to Vice President Bush. I think there was a feeling that this issue wasn’t adequately addressed in the Reagan administration. That was very interesting hence Reagan had had an assassination attempt. When the Bush team took over this was one of the first things they did. It was in the first several months of the administration where we had the meeting on Presidential succession. Boyden had all the documents. He went through it all, how it would work. The meeting probably lasted maybe an hour and everyone knew what the situation was and that was it. I don’t think we ever had any subsequent meeting on that issue. We wanted everyone in the room to agree to how this was all going to work.
John Feerick: In the literature, there’s some, I might say, confusion as to whether or not at that meeting the general discussion got embodied in some kind of document. I know there was a press conference later that month by [White House Press Secretary Marlin] Fitzwater, as I recall, and he said, my recollection is, that there were no agreements, but one of the doctors somehow suggested that there was. Do you have any recollection whether there was any understanding of approaches that got embodied in some kind of writing?
Dan Quayle: No, there was no signed document if you will. We just didn’t work like that. But clearly Boyden had documents that would be implemented if the situation occurred. So there were documents.