He couldn’t have put it more plainly. On April 13, 1965, in the midst of a congressional debate over the proposed 25th Amendment to the Constitution dealing with presidential succession and incapacity, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Representative Emanuel Celler of New York, dispensed with high-minded legal arguments. They were there, Celler said, to figure out what might be done if the unthinkable–a deranged American President with nuclear weapons–became thinkable. “The President may be as nutty as a fruitcake,” Celler declared on the House floor. “He may be utterly insane.” And for this reason, America needed a plan.
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