‘Three hours later, I couldn’t even get a cab’: The highs and lows of being the designated survivor at the State of the Union

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Get our free Inside Washington email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. While Mr Cheney’s absence was obvious to anyone who watched Mr Bush speak that day, the practice of keeping a member of the presidential line of succession away from mass gatherings of government officials — a “designated survivor” to assume the presidency in case of disaster — wasn’t new. This year, it was Labour Secretary Marty Walsh — the first of Mr Biden’s cabinet to announce his departure from the administration — who was selected to be next President of the United States in the event of a successful decapitation strike against the government, If that horrible possibility would come to pass, Mr Walsh would have to put aside his plans to leave government to head the National Hockey League Player’s Association. According to Mr Graff, by the 1990s the protocols for the designated survivor programme had evolved to provide the chosen official, who as a Cabinet officer might normally travel with one or two bodyguards — often federal special agents from their agency’s inspector general’s office who’ve been given executive protection training — a full presidential-level Secret Service detail, complete with a motorcade featuring armoured limousines, sport-utility vehicles carrying a countersniper team, a communications vehicle with satellite links to the Pentagon and White House Situation Room, a jamming vehicle to protect against improvised roadside bombs, and an ambulance. Bill Richardson, the ex-New Mexico governor who served as energy secretary during the Clinton administration, told ABC News in 2019 that the presidential-level entourage “caused quite a ruckus” when he served as designated survivor for then-president Bill Clinton’s final State of the Union in January 2000.