Replacing Congress

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You won't find more passionate supporters than we are for electing, rather than allowing governors to appoint, candidates to fill vacant Senate seats. Politically toxic sideshows this year surrounding vacant Senate seats in Illinois and New York made that case vividly; an ongoing effort by Massachusetts Democrats to change their rules for partisan advantage reinforces the point.

But Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute is right when he argues that there should be a limited exception to the principle: in the event of a national catastrophe that kills or incapacitates large numbers of government officials.

On the eighth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Ornstein says, we should remember how close the country came to losing a large portion of Congress. If United Flight 93 hadn't left late, giving its passengers time to hear about the other attacks and retake control of the aircraft, its hijackers might have succeeded in hitting the Capitol. And if the House of Representatives had lost more than half its members, it could not have assembled a quorum to conduct business. Just when the government needed to work urgently and Americans required confidence in the stability and effectiveness of their political institutions, the legislative branch would have been disabled because there was no way to quickly reassemble the legislature following such an attack.

The best solution may be allowing governors to appoint interim representatives for their states in the case of a massive attack, with special elections to follow after a few months. Such emergency authority would be triggered only if a specified number of members in the House or Senate were dead or incapacitated.

Codifying such a system would require a constitutional amendment. In general, we are wary of proposals to amend the Constitution. But if Congress seriously considers the proposal of Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., to require special elections to fill vacant Senate seats — and we think it should — then Ornstein's suggestions should be considered at the same time.

During the Cold War, the government built an elaborate bomb shelter for members of Congress below the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia; the federal legislature supposedly would escape there just before an incoming nuclear strike. However fanciful that scenario may have been, there's no doubt that attacks in this age could come with almost no warning. It's prudent to consider how democratic institutions would survive and function in a worst-case scenario.

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