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HAROLD CHASE: Well, actually, it doesn't have a long history as an amendment. It was proposed first in '65 and ratified in '67. But what it represented was a long-time concern about what we would do in the event that a president were disabled. So what we thought were the most important provisions of the amendment were 3 and 4, which tried to deal with that problem of, what do you do when a president is incapable of serving?

And remember how important that problem has been in the 20th century. Wilson lay gravely ill. Roosevelt was ill. Eisenhower was stricken. And then of course, Kennedy was mortally wounded. And it was possible that he might have lingered longer.

And the question arises, what do you do in situations like that? Now, we never had a real satisfactory solution. What we had were these agreements that some of the last presidents made with their vice presidents on a very personal basis. And so we, the public, had no interest or no stake. And a lot of us objected to that.

Now, when they got to work on the 25th Amendment to deal with that problem, one of the things that people raised questions about was, why should we ever have a situation where we didn't have a vice president? Because under the old rules of the game, when a vice president moved up to be president, no one filled the vice presidency.

And over the years, we've had different legislation with respect to who would succeed if the vice president who had became president died. Now, I think people, thinking about that, felt that this was not a good way to handle that particular problem, that there always ought to be a logical successor, rather than to have it devolve upon, say, the speaker of the House, who might be a very elderly gentleman, like McCormack, with a very narrow constituency.

GREG BARRON: Dr. Chase, was there any consideration given to the possibility of a vice president resigning or, in some way, being removed from office through something other than illness? And how does that relate to the current situation, where we see a jockeying for position, if you will, for the vice presidency?

HAROLD CHASE: Well, I guess the way I'd answer that is the language suggests that a vice president might resign for reasons other than illness, yet it's so unprecedented. After all, there was only one situation in all of our history where it happened, and it happened under very different reasons. I don't think we really thought we were going to have to worry about a criminal indictment against a vice president.

So as is frequently the case, with respect to the Constitution, the people who propose certain amendments or provisions in the Constitution couldn't foresee all the possibilities and problems. But in any case, there is a provision that in the case of a resignation, certain things would happen. So in a general way, they did provide for it.

But I think the second half of your question intrigues me even more. What kind of situation can we expect to evolve out of the provisions as they're currently written? And I think we have to bear in mind that we're in one of those periods, not highly unusual but unusual, where the presidency is in the hands of one party, and the vice presidency-- excuse me, and the Congress in the hands of the other party. In other words, the majority party in both Houses are the Democrats.

Now, each, under the provisions of the amendment, have power. They've got leverage. The president must make the nomination. But a majority of both House and Senate have to confirm. Now, this means then that the Democrats can say to the president, we will not confirm anyone unless he meets certain requirements or characteristics. On the other hand, the president can say, well, I'm not about to nominate anyone that you are suggesting to me.

Now, I think it's important for people to understand that, because the ultimate strength in a situation like this, where there's a jockeying for power, is how the jockeys perceive the reaction of the American people. In other words, if a president can take the high moral ground and say, I refuse to pick a second-rater just to satisfy the political partisan interests of the Democrats, and people believe him, then he gets advantage. On the other hand, if the Democrats in the Congress can make it appear that they're serving the best interests of America, and the people perceive it this way, then they have the strongest hand.

So that-- I anticipate some real jockeying, some negotiating. And I don't worry about that. I think that's part of a democratic system, democratic with a small D. This is the way we ought to be resolving a lot of our problems, with give and take and with negotiation to try to determine what the best interests of the nation at large are.

So that part doesn't bother me. What I hope is that in this situation, the jockeying ends up in what I think is we would all-- most of us accept as a good result. And what I have in mind there is I'm hoping that we get a real good man.

GREG BARRON: Dr. Harold Chase, Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota, thank you very much. This is Greg Barron.