Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones:
The Madness of Sir Tristram
(1892)

"I feel reasonably confident that there's no pill for that."

Modern governments have struggled to respond to their leader’s incapacity. When King George III went mad the first time, Parliament moved to reassign his authority to his son, the Prince of Wales, but the king recovered before the vote was taken. Later, when he went mad again, his authority was formally reassigned to his son, though George retained his title until his death ten years later. Here, repeated calls for our current incumbent to be removed from his office under the Twenty-fifth Amendment have resulted in no action from either Congress or the Cabinet, the only two bodies holding authority to act. As his madness progresses, it seems unlikely that anybody will act. This seems to be a feature of madness and power. Everyone might agree that someone should act, but nobody seems to see themselves cast in that role. The political cost of admitting to any madness in one’s party seems too goddamn onerous for anyone to act, so they descend into the same madness they witness in sympathetic response.

We pride ourselves on being a country of laws, though our laws seem to be divided into two broad classes: Laws we intend to enforce and those we don’t. Nothing’s written in the actual statute denoting which laws are which, but in practice, the separation becomes nothing more or less than glaring. In general, ethics laws are rarely enforced, except in acts of retribution for other, typically unrelated, often otherwise unenforceable actions. A senator or congressman might be prosecuted for something utterly unrelated to whatever action encouraged the enforcement action. Conspiracy has proven perhaps most popular in this category. Within the class of laws intended to be enforced lie a few that seem to have been passed just to serve as the sin of last resort. If we can’t nail them for corruption, we might put them away for conspiracy to avoid discovery of a crime they weren’t actually indicted for.

Meanwhile, we see our titular leader further degrade both his office and his mental condition. Everyone seems to wholeheartedly agree, with the possible exception of the perennially disagreeable, that he’s batshit crazy, but the response so far has been some form of, “But he’s our batshit, so we’ll stand behind him.” Given the trajectory of most of his outbursts, I’m uncertain if standing behind him can be considered a prudent placement, but the point is that his madness has become the very reason his partisans cannot act to remove him because of his madness. Because he’s clearly violating the letter and spirit of his office, he’s apparently guaranteed free rein to degrade himself and his office at public expense. Sure, declare a whim war while you’re at it. The madder the better! The crazier, the fewer questions are asked. Of course, you’ll support him in disassembling the office. You’re a patriot, ain’t ya?

Anyone who has ever faced madness in their family learns that craziness is communicable. Whoever might get diagnosed with the actual schizophrenia, the rest of the family ends up with something resembling a sympathetic case in resonance. What were before clear lines drawn on unquestionable territory, become all fuzzy whenever craziness rears. The judgment and courage treatment requires becomes the scarcest commodity in the family medicine cabinet. Even those who initially feel overwhelming sympathy soon find their empathy taxed to the point of collapse. Atlas might have held up the world, but not even the strongest of us ever turns into Atlas when craziness visits.

So the 25th Amendment might just as well have been written on toilet paper, as useful as it turns out to be in practice. It seems unimaginable that a two-thirds majority of any Congress or Parliament could ever agree to act against any case of executive Craziness, if only because the legislative branch will have inexorably also contracted a sympathetic case of pretty much the same craziness bedeviling their hobbled chief executive, thereby hobbling themselves. I do not know how to resolve this crazy situation. What wisdom could create a statute that, in practice, could counteract such contagion? I feel reasonably confident that there’s no pill for that.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

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