United States Presidential Line of Succession in Fiction - Books

Books

• Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank (1959): A global nuclear war eliminates the line of succession down to the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, Josephine Vanbruuker-Brown, who identifies herself as being the most junior official in the line of succession.
• American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold by Harry Turtledove (2002) (part of the lengthy Timeline-101 series of alternate history novels): In the 1932 Presidential election, Calvin Coolidge defeats incumbent President Hosea Blackford. One month before Coolidge is to be sworn in, he dies of coronary thrombosis while in Washington to meet with his Cabinet selections. Under the 20th Amendment, Vice-President-elect Herbert Hoover is sworn in to serve Coolidge's term.
• Arc Light by Eric L. Harry (1994), features the 25th Amendment in the context of a limited nuclear war. President Walter Livingston is impeached for warning China that the Russians were preparing to attack them, which resulted in a Russian nuclear strike on the United States. His hawkish Vice President Paul Costanzo is then sworn in by Congress.
• Debt of Honor/Executive Orders by Tom Clancy (1994/1996): After Vice President Ed Kealty resigns following a sex scandal, National Security Advisor Jack Ryan is appointed to fill the position for the remainder of the term. Before he is sworn in, however, a vengeful Japanese airline pilot crashes his fuel-laden Boeing 747 into the Capitol. Almost everyone inside is killed, including the President. Ryan, who barely escapes, is sworn in as the new President.
• Deep Six by Clive Cussler (1984): After the presidential yacht, the Eagle, goes missing with the President, Vice President Vincent Margolin, Speaker of the House Alan Moran and President of the Senate pro tempore Marcus Larimer on board, Secretary of State (and now Acting President) Douglas Oates orders a cover-up, with actors playing the President and Vice President while Oates executed executive powers.
• Directive 51 by John Barnes (2008): The book focuses on the office of the National Continuity Coordinator as he tries to restore the presidency. The book covers several potential scenarios through the presidency of four different men in a period of less than a year.
• Empire by Orson Scott Card (2006), features the assassinations of the President and Vice President and the subsequent ascension of the Speaker of the House. The assassinations result in a civil war, eventually revealed to be instigated by the National Security Advisor, who is himself subsequently elected President.
• The Fourth K by Mario Puzo (1990), features Congress trying to remove President Francis Xavier Kennedy (a fictional nephew of John F. Kennedy) from office, using the 25th Amendment, claiming that he is mentally unfit to serve following the assassination of his daughter.
• Full Disclosure by William Safire (1978): The President is blinded by an assassination attempt while at a summit meeting in the Soviet Union, and an ambitious Secretary of the Treasury attempts to use the 25th Amendment to unseat him. In time, several members of his Cabinet come to believe that his blindness renders him unable to discharge the duties of his office, and they vote to replace him with the Vice President under the terms of the 25th Amendment. The President survives this vote but realizes that his political effectiveness is virtually at an end. He prevails upon the weak-willed Vice President to resign, and then promptly resigns himself, elevating the Speaker of the House to the Presidency.
• The General's President by John Dalmas (1990): As the result of catastrophic economic disaster brought on by a global oil crisis, the President commits suicide. Congress abdicates responsibility and grants unrestricted emergency powers to the office of the President. The Vice President assumes the Presidency but quickly begins to crack under the strain, and asks his closest friend, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to accept the Vice Presidency, after which the President will immediately resign.
• Give Me Liberty a graphic novel by Frank Miller (1990): An alternate history in which America is led through a time of economic depression and civil uprisings by President Erwin Rexall, who is elected in the year 1996. By the year 2009, just as his fourth term is beginning (he has been effective in repealing the 22nd Amendment), the White House is destroyed, President Rexall is incapacitated, and Vice President Cargo, along with all but one member of the Cabinet, is killed. The Secretary of Agriculture, Howard Nissen, assumes the presidency.
• Interface by Neal Stephenson and George Jewsbury (1994). The President-Elect gets shot at his inauguration by a psychotic former factory worker who has somehow figured out the plans of The Network (an underground business coalition) which has conspired to get him elected. Eleanor Richmond, his running mate, ends up as the first black and first female President of the United States.
• Line of Succession by Brian Garfield (1972): During the period between the election and Inauguration Day, the President-elect and the Vice President-elect are both killed by terrorists, along with the Speaker of the House. The President pro tempore of the Senate is totally unsuitable for the Presidency. The incumbent President, defeated for re-election in November, wants to use the situation to stay in office.
• The Man by Irving Wallace (1964): The Vice President has died of a heart attack, and the office is vacant (the 25th Amendment had not yet been written). The President and the Speaker of the House both die as the result of the accidental collapse of a building, and the President pro tempore of the Senate, an African-American, becomes President. (In the conditions prevailing at the time of writing - with the right of African-Americans to civil equality still hotly disputed in the South - Wallace assumed that it was impossible for one of them to achieve the presidency by direct election, and that the only way it could happen would be by an unlikely accident).
• The Negotiator by Frederick Forsyth: The President's only child is abducted and murdered. The President's grief, compounded by not knowing who committed the crime or why, causes him to lose focus on his duties and even to contemplate suicide. The Vice President and other Cabinet members consider declaring the President incapable; the abduction/murder is revealed (to the reader and to a few of the characters) as a conspiracy with exactly that objective.
• The People's Choice: A Cautionary Tale by Jeff Greenfield (1996): A conservative Republican president-elect dies in an accident only a few days after the general election, and therefore before the Electoral College has met.
• The Plot Against America by Philip Roth (2004): In this alternate history, Charles Lindbergh is nominated by the Republican Party in 1940 and defeats Roosevelt on an isolationist platform. When he disappears in The Spirit of St. Louis after a campaign stop, Vice President Burton Wheeler seizes power and initiates an antisemitic witch-hunt.
• The President's Plane is Missing by Robert Serling (1967): Air Force One crashes in a storm and the body of President Haynes cannot be found. Meantime, a growing crisis between the U.S. and the People's Republic of China threatens to lead to war and Vice-President Madigan pressures the cabinet to declare her Acting President under the terms of the 25th Amendment so he can launch a pre-emptive strike.
• Promises to Keep by George Bernau: An alternate history in which President John T. Cassidy (representing John F. Kennedy) survives the assassination attempt in Dallas, but is wounded in the head. The book deals with the political implications of an ambitious Vice President (Rance Gardner, representing Lyndon B. Johnson) who becomes Acting President thanks to a presidential letter signed by Cassidy that resembles the as-yet-unratified 25th Amendment.
• Settling Accounts: Return Engagement by Harry Turtledove (2004) (another Timeline-191 novel): In this alternate history, President Al Smith is killed when the presidential residence in Philadelphia, the Powel House, is destroyed in a Confederate air raid in 1942. Vice President Charles W. La Follette is then sworn in as President.
• Thirty-Four East by Alfred Coppel (1974): The Vice President is kidnapped by Arab terrorists during a visit to the Middle East; at the same time, the President is killed in the accidental crash of Air Force One. With the Vice President incapacitated, the Speaker of the House, a weak man manipulated by the ambitious Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, becomes Acting President.
• Trinity's Child by William Prochnau (1983): A massive nuclear attack on the United States wipes out Washington and half of the Cabinet. The Secretary of the Interior assumes the Presidency and continues to fight World War III. The real President is found to still be living; however, the Secretary of the Interior refuses to relinquish his new office.
• Warday by Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka (1984): The 25th Amendment is incidentally referenced as part of a larger post-apocalyptic narrative. Following a nuclear war, much of the United States is destroyed, including Washington. The Deputy Secretary of the Treasury is eventually found, and deemed to be the highest-ranking politician to survive the war. He is installed as President, but insists that he is merely a caretaker and refuses to use the full title of the office.
• Worldwar: Upsetting the Balance/Worldwar: Striking the Balance by Harry Turtledove (1996/1997): During the interplanetary war between The Race and the formerly warring powers of World War II, Seattle is destroyed in 1943 by the Race in retaliation for the U.S. destruction of a Conquest Fleet division in Chicago. The strike on Seattle kills Vice President Henry Wallace, who was visiting the city at the time. In 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies of unspecified causes. With the Vice Presidency vacant, Secretary of State Cordell Hull assumes the Presidency after Roosevelt's death, as he is the holder of the next-highest post.
• Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra (2003–2008): In this comic book series published by Vertigo, every male mammal on Earth but two simultaneously die of a mysterious plague. As a result, the highest ranking woman, Secretary of Agriculture Margaret Valentine succeeds to the presidency. Valentine protests, saying the Secretary of the Interior outranks her, but her new security escort informs her that the latter was killed in one of the many plane crashes.
• The Prodigal Daughter by Jeffrey Archer. Florentyna Kane first serves in Congress then the Senate. Midway through the book, she runs for President but ends up becoming Vice-President to President Parker. As Vice-President, she assumes command of the military in President Parker's absence, as indeed the law states that when the President is indisposed all power is vested in the Vice-President, when an invasion is launched against the United States and orders the military to intercept the invaders who turn back. Following a heated argument with President Parker, she decides not to run for a second time as Vice-President. While playing golf with her future husband Edward, she decides to wait until the helicopters have passed overhead. Instead, the helicopters land and Florentyna is informed that the President is dead from a heart attack. At her own home, she is sworn in as President of the United States. Her Presidency continues in a rewrite of the Archer book Shall We Tell the President?