Talk:Designated Survivor (TV series)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 25 August 2020 and 18 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Peer reviewers: Vkottapiu, Willimor, Ariannagiannini.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 20:00, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Discontinuation of Series
With respect to, "On July 24, 2019, Netflix announced the series would not be renewed for a fourth season," I'm sure all readers would like to know WHY, particularly since Supergirl plunges ahead with less than 1 million viewers while Designated Survivor was still three times that.Clepsydrae (talk) 13:31, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

(In)Accuracy of the Premise
If anyone is inclined to put in the legwork in regards to research and composition, it might be an improvement to this article for someone to add a section regarding the inaccuracy of the premise. In particular, only the Vice President can actually succeed to the presidency under the 25th Amendment; any others in the presidential line of succession merely become Acting President instead (pursuant to the Presidential Succession Act 1947), which would be the case for Kirkman as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (a position he would be forced to resign under the Act). Moreover, such an individual serves as Acting President only while the President or Vice President are indisposed (by death, incapacity, or what have you) and only until there is an eligible alternative higher in the line of succession, at which time that alternative becomes the Acting President and the former Acting President is now out of a job. This means that Representative Hookstraten would become Acting President when she became Speaker of the House, displacing Kirkman as Acting President until such time as the Senate and House confirmed a nominee for Vice President (be that Representative MacLeish or otherwise) who would automatically succeed to the vacant presidency.

Another inaccuracy, albeit somewhat minor and debateable, is that the show depicts a rather unlikely delay in the length of time taken (around two weeks after the attack) for the governors to appoint replacement Senators in the 45 states where they can (though the Governors' Summit in S01E06 seems to imply that they all can). Realistically, these appointments would take place almost immediately, as even two weeks without a senate would waste valuable time that could be used by the Senate and its committees (the Senate Intelligence Committee in particular) to prepare and vote on emergency legislation that would be crucial for the country and the Executive to effectively respond to the crisis—ideally they'd have bills passed and ready for the incoming House to consider as soon as its new members were sworn in. The concern for presidential oversight in a situation where most of the Government is defunct and the extremity of the crisis might be taken by the (Acting) President as a licence for overreach would also likely motivate the governors to hastily send senators to Washington.

Similarly, there is also a massive delay (until S01E14) in choosing a new Cabinet, which is supposedly justified in part by having to wait for a Senate to confirm them (despite waiting until eight episodes later to even discuss the matter), but in reality an Acting President could simply make recess appointments almost immediately given that there's no Senate or Supreme Court to dispute them. Although the Senate never formally adjourned to a recess because it blew up in the middle of a joint session, a simply logic test makes it clear that if the Senate isn't around to protest your appointment within four days, then the Senate is manifestly in recess or else there would be no need for it to employ the pro forma sessions they usually hold to block recess appointments—instead they could all just bugger off home without formally adjourning the session. Of course, if Acting President Kirkman did make such Cabinet appointments, he would displace himself in favour of his new Secretary of State or whichever other Cabinet officers were higher than the Housing Secretary in the presidential line of succession (even though he isn't even the Housing Secretary anymore—yes, indeed, the Presidential Succession Act is a stupid and almost certainly unconstitutional mess, so you can probably forgive the show for glossing over all the ludicrous details).

Furthermore, those delays are obscenely problematic when you consider the fact that until the governors deign to appoint senators who can elect a President pro tempore of the Senate, there is literally nobody else in the line of succession. Like, if anything happened to Kirkman in the first six episodes of the show, be it death or incapacity, the US would be left without a president until such time as the Senate or House could provide one, and neither Kirkman or anyone else seems remotely worried about that prospect. In the event of such a dramatic attack that deletes the entirety of the US Government, the (Acting) President's absolute first priority should be to ensure continuity of government by either demanding that the governors appoint senators or, more reasonably, establishing a new Cabinet by making recess appointments (and that'd almost certainly be made clear to him if he didn't realise it himself).

If anyone does feel inclined to add such a section, they should of course feel free to copy and use any parts of what I've written here if they find it to be useful (though I expect that what I've written is much too verbose to be suitable for the article). 124.197.44.175 (talk) 13:46, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * This is a work of fiction. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 16:02, 25 November 2020 (UTC)