The House Could Pick Our Next President : Politics: An unpopular Clinton, a Dole beholden to the religious right and a strong independent could force it.

A strong third-party candidate could provide an unexpected turn to the 1996 presidential contest. A tight three-way race between Bill Clinton, Bob Dole and, say, Colin Powell could end up with none of the three becoming President.

Hidden in the Constitution and long forgotten is the most dangerous provision in our supreme law. If no presidential candidate gets a majority in the electoral college, the House of Representatives will decide who is to be the next President (the Senate elects the vice president). That has not happened since 1825, when the House elected John Quincy Adams.

In the election of 1824, four candidates received electoral votes. None got a majority. Under the 12th Amendment, the House had to choose among the top three. Speaker Henry Clay (who had run fourth and therefore could not be considered by the House) intrigued against his hated rival, Andrew Jackson, to elect Adams.

Could this happen in 1996? Suppose an unpopular Clinton squeaks through the Democratic nomination and Dole capitulates to the religious right to gain the Republican nomination. A third of the electorate would be left holding their noses: a slew of Democrats reluctant to vote for Clinton, and a large number of moderate Republicans turned off by the religious right, all of their votes sweetened to the idea of a strong, mainstream third-party candidate.

If Powell declared for President and took pro-choice, pro-civil rights positions, the polls show that he has the clout to carry some states in a tight three-way race. That could throw the election into the House.

If the 1996 election does go to the House, the nation will be confronted with a disconcerting constitutional fact: Each state would have one vote. Wyoming would have one vote and California would have one vote.

Many of the drafters of the Constitution, not anticipating the rise of the two-party system, expected most elections to end up in the House. Alexander Hamilton feared “cabal, intrigue and corruption,” and those were exactly the methods used by Clay in 1825. He cloaked the House in secrecy. The galleries were cleared, the doors were locked and the votes of both members and states were kept secret.

An absolute majority of 26 states is needed for the House to elect. With the nation in upheaval and three powerful candidates struggling for the votes of the state delegations, we would have cabal, intrigue and corruption. To make matters worse, a “divided” state--say, Nevada’s two representatives backing different candidates--would have no vote. The newly elected House members sworn in on Jan. 3 would have a mere 17 days to reach a majority for one candidate by Inauguration Day. I question that they could do it.

At noon on Jan. 20, 1997, we would have no President, unless the Senate had elected a vice president. But could the Senate muster the 51 votes to elect one if the House had not elected a President?

President Clinton would surely call for Congress to pass a succession act making him temporary President until the House acted. The Republicans would gag. Under the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, the Speaker of the House would be next in line for the presidency. In what would amount to a palace coup (though a perfectly legal one), Newt Gingrich would be the 43rd President.

Would Gingrich take that enormous step? He would have to resign his House seat and the Speakership, and Congress would have in reserve the power to elect one of the three presidential candidates, throwing an officeless Newt onto Pennsylvania Avenue.

Gingrich has the adulation of staunch supporters in both House and Senate. With the power of the presidency in his hands, and a popular mandate to “remake America,” would anyone deign (or risk) suggesting that Congress elect someone else once Gingrich was in the White House?