RIP Madeleine Albright

"In early 2000, I became the first senior U.S. official to meet with Vladimir Putin in his new capacity as acting president of Russia. We in the Clinton administration did not know much about him at the time — just that he had started his career in the K.G.B. I hoped the meeting would help me take the measure of the man and assess what his sudden elevation might mean for U.S.-Russia relations, which had deteriorated amid the war in Chechnya. Sitting across a small table from him in the Kremlin, I was immediately struck by the contrast between Mr. Putin and his bombastic predecessor, Boris Yeltsin.

"Whereas Mr. Yeltsin had cajoled, blustered and flattered, Mr. Putin spoke unemotionally and without notes about his determination to resurrect Russia’s economy and quash Chechen rebels. Flying home, I recorded my impressions. “Putin is small and pale,” I wrote, “so cold as to be almost reptilian.” He claimed to understand why the Berlin Wall had to fall but had not expected the whole Soviet Union to collapse. “Putin is embarrassed by what happened to his country and determined to restore its greatness.”"

- Madeleine Albright

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/23/opinion/putin-ukraine.html

...but due to a Constitutionally-mandated "disability" to hold the office (Art. II, Sec. 1), not a because of any disability or defect inherent in her position as Secretary of State, which is the *first* Cabinet office to be named in the list of those who may succeed the President. (See 3 USC 19(d)(1), part of the codification of the Presential Succession Act of 1947, Pub.L. 80–199, 61 Stat. 380.)

For the same reason, our former Governor, the current Sec. of Energy, is ineligible for succession (as she was born in Canada).