““The commission also confronted one of the strangest and most nettlesome phrases in COG operations—a seemingly unnecessary aside in the language guiding presidential succession known as the “supplantation clause,” which held that a prior-entitled presidential successor could supplant a lower-level officer who was serving as “acting president.” Harry Truman had felt that “elected” officials should always trump “appointed” officials in presidential succession, and the Presidential Succession Act allowed a newly chosen speaker of the House or Senate president pro tem to take over from a cabinet official who had been serving as “acting president.””
