The US Media, The Constitution and Biden: Some History
American outlets seem to lack curiosity when it comes to their President
“The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary.” – George Orwell.
There is no freedom of the press in England. The nearest thing we got to it was after the 1688 revolution.
A settlement between William III and Parliament meant the country’s constitution was rewritten and new freedoms were pursued.
When the Licencing Act came up for renewal in 1695, the Whigs (who opposed the Tory’s pro-absolute monarchy ideals) successfully fought against it.
The philosopher-pamphleteer John Locke was a leading opponent of the legislation. But his arguments against the law rested on the fact that the Stationer's Company had a monopoly on literary affairs as chief censor.
The slow system meant books took longer to publish, were more expensive than they had to be and the government could raid people’s homes looking for unlicensed titles, violating their property rights.
It should be noted on this latter point that the idiom ‘a man’s home is his castle’ has a very long history in England and was expressed in a common law ruling by Sir Edward Coke in 1604.
Though governments would later use taxes, libel and sedition laws to suppress the media, the decision not to renew the Licencing Act enabled new presses to spring up across the country.
Religious ‘dissenters’, including Quakers, protestant separatists from the Church of England and Roman Catholics, also had more room to share their ideas.
Previously, only publishers in Oxford, Cambridge and London were able to print “by authority”. By at least 1700 a provisional press was being established throughout England and there were also new opportunities in the colonies.
The early American press
Benjamin Harris, an English refugee, had established the first newspaper in the American colonies in 1690 with Boston's Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick.
The operation was quickly shut down. The Boston News-Letter, published by John Campbell, came next in 1704. His efforts, coming after the Licencing Act, lasted twenty seven years.
It was still a risky business. The laws of seditious libel were used to crackdown on dissenting voices in the press. And such an incident is arguably how Benjamin Franklin, who was apprenticed to his brother James, got his start.
When James ran afoul of the authorities of the self-governing Province of Massachusetts Bay and got himself locked-up, Benjamin’s name started to appear as the publisher of The New-England Courant.
Seeking freedom from his master/brother and in his literary pursuits, Franklin later fled Boston and established himself in Philadelphia, then the capital of the Province of Pennsylvania, the colony originally established by the Quaker William Penn.
He would go on to acquire The Pennsylvania Gazette, one of the most important publications in early Anglo-American history. The title went on to serve as a bulwark against British government and crown excess.
It was The Gazette which first published the ‘Join, or die’ cartoon (the first American cartoon in American history) in 1754.
It’s original purpose was to urge the colonies to unite against French forces and Native Americans. It was later repurposed during the American Revolution.
Amongst other things, The Gazette also spread the word about Thomas Paine’s Common Sense pamphlet, a rallying cry advocating independence from Britain and the establishment of a republic (Franklin, of course, had encouraged Paine over to the American colonies during a trip to London).
But even though the press had helped the Americans shake-off the British overseers, freedom of the press did not make the original US Constitution.
It was George Mason, the chief author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, the foundational text of the Declaration of Independence, who campaigned alongside the anti-federalists to establish a Bill of Rights in the US Constitution.
It was the first amendment of those ten which included the freedom of press and assembly. For the anti-federalists, these additions tempered the power the northern former colonies and a centralised government could have over the south-eastern states.
It was James Madison, later the fourth President of the United States, who helped draft the Bill of Rights. With his campaign complete, Mason, a reluctant politician and widower, returned to his plantation and his nine children.
Limitations on POTUS
Perhaps because of this reluctance and the fragility of life in the 1700s, Mason, Madison and the other fathers of the US Constitution only put minimal, not maximal, age limits on any US President.
To become commander-in-chief, it was decided that the office holder must be at least 35. And to enter the US Congress, they should be 30 or older. There were no limitations on a US President becoming too ill or incapable to fulfil their duties.
That issue was tested early on by Madison himself, who in June 1813 was struck down by a serious fever (some scholars suspect it could have been malaria) for at least three weeks.
Madison was bedridden and unable to read resolutions of the Senate, but he refused to temporarily hand over his power to his Vice President, Elbridge Gerry.
The constitutional conundrum continued through Presidential history up to the ultra-violent assassination of Jack Kennedy. The murder, committed during the Cold War and well into the start of the new TV age, forced the adoption of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment in 1967.
This issue wasn’t so much Kennedy’s tragic death, but the confusion around the Vice President’s role and what actions should be taken if Kennedy survived and, at the same time, be totally incapacitated.
That’s why The Twenty-Fifth Amendment provided the constitutional procedures for the removal of a president or vice president for the first time.
It is Section Four of that amendment which has never been triggered and had received little interest from the US media over the past year:
“Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
“Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.
“Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.”
This wording is deliberately vague and the key word “inability” has no specific definition.
But according to a briefing from Yale Law, Mortimer Caplin, vice-chairman of the Miller Center Commission on Presidential Disability, stated that ‘inability’ “encompasses physical conditions, mental illnesses, chronic diseases, and unforeseen emergencies—including political emergencies —that render the President unable to act”.
Moving away from the US Constitution, and towards the media’s lack of curiosity on the matter, it is thought that President George H. W. Bush is the first President to establish a contingency plan for his disability. This plan has also allegedly provided a framework for future Presidents.
But for whatever reason there is little if any mention of this in the US press. Even before The Department for Justice’s Hur Report, which raised serious concerns about President Biden (I wrote about all the unanswered questions at the time), there were red flags.
The CNN debate showed Biden’s fragility up. The current narrative framing is around the general election and Biden’s potential successor.
But, with some history behind us, what if it turns out that the most powerful nation on Earth had someone “unable” at the helm for more than a year?
I suppose there’s one thing having the freedom to investigate something, and it’s another thing to actually do it.
Other tech and media news of interest🤔
Political Press Box update. Morten Morland is the latest episode. I’ve had to pull this one out from my audio archives as plans ramp-up to 4 July and political hacks are tied down. Either way, you should get some good insights into one of the best political cartoonists working today. Do please share with your friends, family and strangers.
TMTG update. Trump Media shares jumped 10% on the back of the head-to-head between Trump and Biden. But they fell back down to their pre-debate levels over the weekend (they’re now at around $33 per share). Funny enough, it seems Fox News was the big winner of the CNN debate. The channel secured the highest ratings of the simulcast, averaging 13.4m viewers.
AI ‘hallucination’ breakthrough? Researchers at Oxford University have found out when it’s likely for generative AI models to make things up. “This advance could open up new ways to deploy LLMs in situations where ‘careless errors’ are costly such as legal or medical question-answering,” the academics claim.
Newspaper endorsements. The FT, Murdoch’s Sunday Times and The Economist have all now backed Labour at the UK general election. The Mail has thrown its support behind Rishi Sunak and The Conservatives, while The Mirror has endorsed Keir Starmer’s party (no surprises there). Will The Sun and The Times, the two other News UK outlets, back Labour? And do these endorsements really matter in the digital age?
AI doomers building moats? This story makes me think of the following quote from Adam Smith: “The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.”
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