DEAR READERS OF RON'S AMERICAN WORLD:  Please take time to express your opinion of this article below.  What do you think is the right thing to do about removing both T-Rump and Pence for bribery/knowledge of      bribery and not reporting or stopping it.  The Constitution provides that the Speaker of the House then takes over the presidency.  That speaker is Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat.  That would be a historical first.  How would the country react?  Why not obey that rule?  That is important to some -- actually many like me.  But Leonhardt disagrees.  Read below and tell us your opinion.

November 21, 2019

By David Leonhardt Opinion Columnist

The president led a conspiracy to use American foreign policy for his personal benefit. We’ve known that much for weeks. Yesterday, we heard a credible accusation that the vice president, among other top officials, was aware of the conspiracy and evidently did nothing to stop it.

Imagine for a moment that congressional Republicans were willing to make good on the oath they have all taken to defend the Constitution. In that scenario (fanciful, I realize), both President Trump and Vice President Pence would be at risk of being impeached and removed. This combination would then create a new and separate political crisis.

Why? Because the second person in the presidential line of succession, after the vice president, is the speaker of the House, who is of course currently a Democrat — Nancy Pelosi. If both Trump and Pence were removed from office, Pelosi would become president, flipping partisan control of the White House and the executive branch.

That should never happen. A scandal should be able to lead to the removal of individual officials, but it should not reverse which party won an election. “If the electorate says that such-and-such a party should have the White House for four years, it ought to have the White House for four years,” Dwight Eisenhower wisely said.

The potential for a partisan reversal raises all kinds of problems. It creates incentives for one party to exaggerate a scandal (which, to be clear, is not happening in this case). It can also lead to more voters distrusting an impeachment process. “The whole point of having a line of succession is to ensure a smooth transition and a continuity of administration in a time of crisis,” my colleague Jesse Wegman has written. “Having a leader of the opposing party take over the White House, especially in an era of intense political polarization, would not achieve that, to put it mildly.”

Or as Jonathan Bernstein of Bloomberg Opinion writes: “It’s contrary to the entire structure of the constitutional system, which separates legislative from executive institutions and forces them to share powers.”

The line of succession stems from a 1947 law, and it can be changed with a new law anytime. Pelosi and House Democrats should pass such a law as soon as possible, so that every potential successor comes from the executive branch. It would be a victory for good government — and would also send a message about the severity of Trump’s and Pence’s high crimes and misdemeanors.