So Andrew Johnson is widely seen as one of America’s worst presidents, remembered for being impeached and for his battles over Reconstruction. But on July 18, 1868, in the waning days of his term, Johnson proposed four very interesting constitutional amendments… 1/

2/ None of these amendments were adopted… in 1868. Congress, overwhelmingly Republican, had just impeached Johnson, and was in no mood to consider anything from him.

But Johnson’s proposals seem a little different with the benefit of posterity.

3/ One of Johnson’s proposals later was adopted as the 17th Amendment: Direct election of senators. "It would be more consistent with the genius of our form of government if the Senators were chosen directly by the people of the several States,” he wrote to Congress.

4/ Another amendment would — with one important difference — be adopted in 1967 as one part of the 25th Amendment: setting the order of succession to the office of the presidency. The Constitution only specifies that the VP succeeds and that Congress can set acting presidents.

5/ Johnson’s particular proposal would put the Secretary of State behind the VP in the line of succession, followed by Treasury, War, etc. That sounds similar to the 25th Amendment with one key difference: the absence of the Pres. Pro Tem of the Senate and Speaker of the House.

6/ In 1868 this wasn’t a hypothetical issue. Johnson had no VP, so the President Pro Tempore of the Senate was next in line of succession. When Johnson was impeached, that created a conflict of interest — the PPT of the Senate could essentially vote to make himself president.

7/ But it turns out the question of whether the presiding officers of the House and Senate should be in the line of succession is a huge murky constitutional issue dating back to 1792! Madison, for one, thought this arrangement was not what he intended in the Constitution.

8/ One of the big reasons Congress put the Senate PPT and House Speaker in the line of succession in 1792 was because the Federalist-controlled Congress didn’t want to put Democratic-Republican Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson in line inherit the presidency!

9/ In his book “Constitutional Cliffhangers,” @ProfBrianKalt quotes legal experts describing legislative leaders being in the line of succession to the presidency as “intolerable,” “disastrous,” and “the single most dangerous statute in the United States Code.”

10/ The issue, basically, is that the Constitution lets Congress determine which “Officers” act as president. As Madison wrote, “It may be questioned whether [the PPT and Speaker] are ‘officers’, in the constitutional sense.”

11/ Johnson wrote in 1868: “It seems an eminently proper time for us to… place the executive department beyond the reach of usurpation, and remove from the legislative and judicial departments every temptation to combine for the absorption of all the powers of government."

12/ So that’s two of Andrew Johnson’s proposed amendments: direct election of senators and changing the line of succession.

The other two are even more relevant from the perspective of 2020’s debates: direct election of the president, and 12-year Supreme Court term limits!

13/ Andrew Johnson wanted direct election of presidents, without the Electoral College or House playing a role: "The danger of a defeat of the people's choice in an election by the House of Representatives remains unprovided for in the Constitution.”

14/ Johnson continued that this danger "would be greatly increased if the House of Representatives should assume the power arbitrarily to reject the votes of a State which might not be cast in conformity with the wishes of the majority in that body."

15/ Something similar to this scenario Johnson raises would become much less theoretical less than a decade later, in 1876; you can read about that in this thread: https://twitter.com/dhmontgomery/status/1309551398753894402

16/ OOPS. I made a mistake earlier in this thread. The 25th Amendment doesn’t address presidential succession beyond VP. The line of succession is currently set by a 1947 law, not a constitutional amendment. https://twitter.com/dhmontgomery/status/1310309869434687488