WASHINGTON - President Bush said yesterday that he would transfer the powers of the presidency to Vice President Dick Cheney for a short time today while he is under sedation for what he described as a routine colonoscopy.
The White House counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, said Cheney would be acting president "for a matter of hours" under a clause in the 25th Amendment. That clause has been invoked at only one other time in American history, in July 1985, when President Ronald Reagan underwent surgery for colon cancer and transferred powers for about nine hours to Bush's father, then the vice president.
The colonoscopy, a procedure that uses a lighted scope to examine the entire length of the colon, will be conducted at a medical facility at Camp David, the presidential retreat in the Catoctin Mountains.
Bush's White House physician, Dr. Richard Tubb, told reporters at a news conference late yesterday afternoon that he could not say whether Bush would be only lightly sedated, with some degree of consciousness, or whether he would be completely unconscious.
Tubb said Bush's doctors would make that decision during the procedure based on the president's "comfort level" and reaction to any pain.
Some patients undergo colonoscopies without medication, but most get some form of sedation. "I have had the procedure myself, both with sedation and without, and I will tell everybody here I recommend having it with sedation," Tubb said.
Both Bush and his doctor said yesterday that he had no symptoms or pain. The president said he was undergoing the colonoscopy because it had been recommended during a routine physical last summer that he have one in a year. He has had a total of four benign polyps removed during two earlier colonoscopies.
"I feel great," Bush told reporters yesterday. "This is ... a kind of part of the annual physical. And so I just decided to do it at this time, to fit in with my schedule."
White House officials, citing security precautions, would not say at what time Bush was scheduled to undergo the procedure. They said they would inform the public only after the procedure was over and the powers of the presidency had been transferred back to Bush. Cheney is to be at the White House during the procedure.
Bush, who will turn 56 on July 6, told reporters he made the decision to transfer his powers to Cheney because of the campaign against terrorism.
"I did so because we're at war and I just want to be super - you know, super cautious," Bush said on the South Lawn of the White House before boarding Marine One, the presidential helicopter that took him to Camp David.
Bush joked that he had informed the vice president of his impending powers and "he's standing by. He'll realize he's not going to be president that long."
To transfer power to Cheney, Bush was to sign a letter to the speaker of the House and the president pro tem of the Senate right before the anesthesia takes effect. The letter was to be faxed to the offices of the speaker, Republican Rep. J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, and the president pro tem of the Senate, Democrat Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia. The president will sign another letter transferring powers back to him when the procedure is over. That letter will also be faxed to Hastert and Byrd.
Gonzales said the letter would advise Hastert and Byrd that the president's power was being transferred to Cheney under Section 3 of the 25th Amendment. That amendment was approved in 1967, four years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and provides for the temporary or permanent transfer of presidential power in case the president is unable to fulfill his duties.
No such transfer of power was made in 1981, when Reagan underwent surgery to remove an assassin's bullet from his lung. Medical experts and historians say that, essentially, no one was in charge of the country during Reagan's operation.