Ingraining Anxiety: Ratifying the Twenty-Fifth Amendment in the Nuclear Age analyzes the Twenty-Fifth Amendment’s ratification process through the lens of nuclear anxiety. Traditional histories of the amendment argue that Kennedy’s assassination was both the proximate and prime factor in the passage of the amendment, but because they do not consider the omnipresence of nuclear anxiety, such assessments remain incomplete. Witnesses’ testimony and congressmembers’ debate during congressional hearings, backroom conversations and negotiations, and state legislators’ concerns suggest nuclear anxiety played a role in every stage of the process from its drafting, through debate and passage in both houses, and ratification in the states. However, the role of anxiety—an amorphous concept—was complicated. While nuclear anxiety pushed the process forward overall, it also led to debate in both houses of Congress over language, amount of detail, and time limits. For a richer understanding of the reasons behind the Twenty-Fifth Amendment’s ratification, this chapter argues that nuclear anxiety must be taken more fully into account.