Babbitt Was the Designated Absentee
The Administration decided to follow tradition this week and have one Cabinet member not attend President Clinton’s speech to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol.
The tradition, insisted upon by the Secret Service, is to ensure that some member of the Cabinet can take command of the government if a calamity occurs and the line of succession is wiped out.
By law, after Vice President Al Gore, the line of succession falls to House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.), Senate President Pro Tempore Robert C. Byrd (D-W. Va.) and then down through the Cabinet.
In the George Bush and Ronald Reagan Administrations, the duty alternated among the lower-level Cabinet members, one of whom would be given Secret Service protection for the evening.
The person selected for that distinction Wednesday night was Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who was in Oklahoma City while en route to Arizona. The Interior secretary nominally ranks eighth in the line of succession.
If Babbitt had not been designated and the Doomsday scenario occurred, Acting Atty. Gen. Stuart Gerson, a Republican holdover who also did not attend the Clinton speech, apparently would have been the next in line to become President.
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