LaRouche: Invoke the 25th Amendment
To Remove Obama
by Jeffrey Steinberg
Oct. 9—Speaking on LPAC-TV's Oct. 6 Weekly Report, Lyndon LaRouche announced that he has called for President Barack Obama's immediate removal from office, because he is clearly no longer mentally competent to remain in the Presidency. LaRouche demanded the invocation of the 25th Amendment, which provides for the orderly removal of a President, and his replacement by the Vice President, due to physical or mental impairment.
LaRouche explained his motives for taking this very serious initiative:
"Last night, on the basis of information received, I moved for the 25th Amendment for the ouster of the President, on those grounds. The reason of the timing was the general situation, the manifest state of the President's mind, or at least behavior: that he is actually in the kind of mental condition, which warrants his ouster on this. Which means that there should be an initiative by certain people, in the White House itself, including the Vice President, who should motivate this. And, once he does that, then the Congress is called back from recess, immediately, to consider an impeachment, in this form of impeachment.
"It requires no offense, other than the fact that he has got the problems, and the problems that are diagnosed in the act, as by Jerrold Post and company who composed the study on which the amendment is based—all the conditions are there: This guy is cracking up, he's gone. He's not qualified to be President. He must be removed for the sake of the nation, and we have the Constitutional Amendment, which prepares exactly this. And he is exactly the mental type, described in detail, the narcissist syndrome, and there is no question about it. I diagnosed this, of course, on April 11, of last year, and I was right then, and I'm more right than ever today. So, this man has to go.
"If he doesn't go, the nation itself is in danger, by virtue of his intrinsic incompetence.
"And we see the Congress is inept, incapable of responding to anything competently. We are going into an election where we're going to have chaos in the Congress, as a result of the lack of competent action by the Congress, under the conditions of breakdown....
"There are other implications of this: Because we are on the verge of a general breakdown crisis of the entire world economy. This is now in process. We have global hyperinflation; it's not only global hyperinflation, it's admitted to be hyperinflation, by our government, by the Treasury Department, by the Federal Reserve. And the Europeans are doing the same thing! Hyperinflation.
"Now, this means a worse condition than what hit, as a result of the German hyperinflation of 1923. The German hyperinflation of 1923 was compartmentalized to within the borders of Germany. And therefore, the rest of Europe, while affected by this, was not clobbered by it. Germany was.
"Now, that means, we are now having a 1923 Germany-style chain-reaction collapse of the world economy, now in progress, on a global scale, and there are no present barriers to a general breakdown crisis of the entire world economy.
"Europe is unable to handle it. Europe has not shown any capability. You have rustling, in Germany; they are not happy about this whole situation. Russia's got a problem, they have not resolved the problem of management there, their economic policy. China is holding out, and China will resist, but, if the United States goes, under these conditions—and it can go in the weeks ahead—then the whole world will go. And you will have a prolonged, global Dark Age, which nothing can stop, once it gets rolling. And therefore, before the Dark Age syndrome hits, we've got to stop this thing.
"We will not stop it, as long as this President remains President. Therefore, the justification for the 25th Amendment action, is very clear. Not only is this President fit for suspension, of his office, but it is now necessary to do that, because his presence in office ensures the destruction of world civilization."
The Evidence Is Overwhelming
Beginning on Sept. 7, the website www.newsflavor.com began publication of a series of interviews with an anonymous former member of the Obama campaign and transition team, and a White House insider, who presented a frightening picture of a President undergoing a psychological meltdown. In the interviews, published through Oct. 7, the insider chronicled the breakdown of the Executive branch's functioning, as President Obama collapsed into deep depression, and became more and more fixated on those publicly criticizing his performance.
This eyewitness account precisely mirrored LaRouche's clinical assessment of Obama's Nero Complex, publicly presented on April 11, 2009, in a now-famous international webcast.
"Obama loved to campaign," the anonymous source said in the first of the interviews. "He clearly didn't like the work of being President, though, and that attitude was felt by the entire White House staff within weeks after the inauguration. Obama the tireless, hard-working candidate, became a very tepid personality to us. And the few news stories that did come out against him were the only things he seemed to care about. He absolutely obsesses over Fox News. For being so successful, Barack Obama is incredibly thin-skinned. He takes everything very personally."
In the second part of the interview series, asked what advice he would give the President, to turn things around, the anonymous Democratic Party figure was blunt:
"I would tell the President to pull his head out of his ass. To man up, grow up, and start to pay attention to what the American people want and need. That is a big, big flaw with this president. He comes at it from the position of thinking he knows what we need because we don't have the ability to know for ourselves. And he doesn't respect any opinion that is different from his own. He just doesn't care to know any other side to any given issue. I really believe it's a maturity thing. I think our president needs to grow up. I hate to put it that way, but there it is. President Obama, grow up."
On Sept. 27, blogger "Ulsterman" returned to his anonymous source, and reported from a still-active White House official that the President was being medically treated for severe depression. The source elaborated: "The infighting among the staff is off the charts. More recently, the president has increasingly withdrawn emotionally from the day to day demands of his job—he has become what was described to me as 'empty'.... His natural detachment has become almost chronic to the point of being disconcerting to staff around him. It appears President Obama is suffering from severe depression."
Asked why this was happening, the White House source said, "Well, for one, he was completely unprepared for the job of being President of the United States. The demands on one's time, the emotional and physical toll, are considerable. Second, the failure of the administration to effectively communicate to the American people. You have to understand that Obama believed that his ability to orate would be enough—that is proving to have been a considerable mistake on Obama's part, and he is not dealing particularly well with that reality."
Since the publication of these interviews, this news service has independently heard from a number of leading Democratic Party officials that the "Ulsterman" source is genuine, and that the picture of the President's psychological meltdown is accurate. Several senior U.S. intelligence officials, with close access to the White House, have further corroborated these reports, and have expressed growing alarm about the collapse of Presidential leadership at a moment of great crisis.
It was precisely out of concern for such a future Presidential crisis that the framers of the 25th Amendment acted.
Legislative History
In the aftermath of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the U.S. Congress seriously took up the issue of Presidential succession, and the process by which a sitting President could be removed from office, on the basis of incapacity to serve, due to physical or mental illness. The U.S. Constitution was vague on the precise issue of succession and incapacity, and on several prior occasions, it led to potential crisis. In 1841, when President William Henry Harrison died in office, Vice President John Tyler assumed the Presidency, even though the Constitution only provided for the Vice President to be "Acting President." When President Woodrow Wilson had a mental breakdown (widely attributed to a stroke) 18 months before his term expired, the First Lady and key White House advisors ran the country, without ever officially acknowledging that the President was incapacitated.
In 1963, Senators Estes Kefauver and Kenneth Keating proposed a Constititutional amendment, to authorize the Congress to legislate Presidential succession and rules for removing a President from office for incapacity. That effort was blocked, out of fear that Congress could abuse the power. However, on Jan. 1, 1965, Sen. Birch Bayh and Rep. Emanuel Cellar introduced a Constitutional amendment, spelling out the procedures for succession and for determination of a President's incapacity. The amendment passed both Houses of Congress on July 6, 1965, and was sent to the states for ratification. On Feb. 10, 1967, the required 38 states ratified the amendment.
On two occasions, there was serious consideration of invoking Section 4: On March 30, 1981, when President Ronald Reagan was shot by would-be assassin John Hinckley, there was brief consideration of invoking the 25th Amendment, and an ad hoc group of close Presidential advisors, at Reagan's bedside following his surgery, concluded that he was mentally fit to remain in office. In 1987, when Donald Regan was replaced by Howard Baker as Reagan's Chief of Staff, Baker was urged to make a determination as to whether Reagan was still mentally sharp enough to serve out his term. After an initial White House meeting between the President and the new staff, Baker concluded that Reagan was perfectly capable of continuing as President.
It now rests with Vice President Joe Biden and the key Cabinet officials to put the vital interests of the country first, and apply the 25th Amendment.
