'Designated Survivor': Anthony Foxx is government official absent from the State of the Union address

Everyone who is anyone in U.S. government was at the Capitol on Tuesday night to hear President Barack Obama deliver his annual State of the Union address. Everyone, that is, except Anthony Foxx. The Obama administration’s transportation secretary is this year’s “designated survivor,” the cabinet member chosen to skip the speech in case there is a deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Since George Washington delivered his first State of the Union address to an assembled Congress in 1790, the very vague constitutional requirement that the president “from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient” has morphed into a highly anticipated, annual primetime event. As such, a variety of traditions and rituals have developed around the State of the Union.

Among those traditions is the selection of a designated survivor.

Though the Senate Historical Office’s record (PDF) of designated survivors dates back only to 1984, the office clarifies that “the practice of one cabinet official remaining absent from the event dates at least to the early 1960s and perhaps much earlier. Prior to the 1980s, however, the selection of the official was often not made public.”

Unsurprisingly, the designated survivor ritual is widely believed to be rooted in Cold War fears of nuclear attack. During his presidency, Dwight D. Eisenhower issued a number of executive orders that made up the Continuity of Operations Plan. The orders outlined provisions meant to keep government running in the event of nuclear attack, from constructing secret underground facilities large enough to house all of Congress to designating which government officials would take over the responsibilities of higher office if those in more senior positions were killed.

In a situation like the State of the Union or a presidential inauguration, the president, vice president and Cabinet members are all gathered in one place. If an attack on such an event were to kill the most powerful officials in U.S. government, someone would have to step in and assume the responsibilities of the president in order for the country to go on. Enter the designated survivor.

That’s a lot of pressure for a transportation secretary, but the designated survivor is plucked from the lower ranks of the presidential Cabinet. In fact, secretaries of state or Treasury have never been chosen for the gig. But if there had been a deadly catastrophe at the Capitol during Obama’s 2010 State of the Union address, when Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan was the designated survivor, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who also missed that year’s SOTU, would have become president instead of Donovan, because her office was higher. Clinton’s absence from the speech did not qualify her for the designated survivor role, however, because her location (she was at a conference in London) was public knowledge.

The designated survivor, on the other hand, must spend the duration of the State of the Union in an undisclosed location. According to ABC News, the designated survivor is selected a few weeks before the president’s speech, at which time he or she begins “training.” What exactly that training entails is a secret, but since 9/11, reportedly, the designated survivor has been accompanied by presidential-level security and the “nuclear football,” a leather suitcase filled with classified nuclear war plans that is always carried by White House military aides so the president can make a game-time nuclear decision no matter where he is.

Since the worst-case scenario would mean the designated survivor becomes president of the United States, the person chosen for the role must meet the qualifications of the country’s highest office, such as being a natural-born citizen above the age of 35. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, for example, could not have been a designated survivor because she was born in Czechoslovakia and therefore could not be president. As a 44-year-old native of Charlotte, N.C., however, Anthony Foxx fits the bill.