WASHINGTON — Given Vice President Dick Cheney's history of heart problems, even his brief trip to the hospital Saturday after suffering shortness of breath raised questions about what would happen if he were forced to step aside for health reasons.
Under the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, President Bush would nominate a replacement who would have to be confirmed by the House and Senate.
There is no timetable for selecting a replacement. "It's as fast as the public process will allow it to be," said Timothy Walch, director of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and the editor of "At the President's Side: The Vice Presidency in the 21st Century."
If something were to happen to Bush before a vice president was confirmed, the next in line to succeed him would be Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert.
The constitutional provision to replace the vice president has been used twice since it was ratified in 1967. Both cases involved scandal.
President Nixon appointed Rep. Gerald R. Ford in 1973 to replace Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, who resigned after prosecutors began investigating allegations that he had taken kickbacks from contractors while governor of Maryland and had received some of the money after becoming vice president.
Although Agnew publicly proclaimed, "I will not resign if indicted!" during a speech in Los Angeles that September, he made a deal with prosecutors the following month. He submitted his resignation letter the same day he pleaded no contest to tax charges in a federal court in Baltimore, avoiding a prison term.
Nixon then nominated Ford, who was confirmed and took the oath of office less than two months later.
When Nixon resigned in 1974 during the Watergate scandal, Ford assumed the presidency and chose Nelson A. Rockefeller to fill the No. 2 spot. Rockefeller became vice president four months after being nominated.
Before the ratification of the 25th Amendment, if something happened to the vice president while in office, the position stayed vacant.
When President Franklin D. Roosevelt died in 1945, Vice President Harry S. Truman succeeded him. But the office of the vice president remained unfilled until 1949.
Former Sen. Mark Hatfield, who wrote a history of U.S. vice presidents for the Senate Historical Office in 1997, said the impetus for the constitutional amendment was the death of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.
