It’s mega speech night in the US, that means someone will be labeled the “designated survivor.” Please please don’t let it be Sec/Ed Devos! Maybe Keifer Sutherland is available – PB/TK
Designated Survivors Recount Nights as Doomsday Presidents –
For a few fleeting hours 20 years ago, then-Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman was Washington’s designated survivor.
If a catastrophic event had wiped out a packed House chamber during President Bill Clinton’s State of the Union, Glickman — waiting in the wings outside the capital — would have become the acting commander in chief.
“You would have had a President Glickman,” he said.
His potentially life-altering appointment as the designated survivor comes from tradition — one that would carry on when President Donald Trump gives his first address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday.
A member of his inner circle would presumably be sent to a secure and undisclosed location, far from the political pageantry on Capitol Hill.
While the process of selecting someone may seem cloaked in mystery — though it has found new popularity thanks to a TV show of the same name — members of the designated survivor club recently peeled back the curtain to NBC News.
“One part of it seems totally unrealistic. Then there’s a certain realism that sets in and you have to take it seriously,” said former Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson, who was the designated survivor when President George W. Bush gave his State of the Union in 2006.
Continue to nbcnews.com article: http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/trumps-address-to-congress/designated-survivors-recount-nights-doomsday-presidents-n720691
