ConfirmThem

By AndrewHyman Comments () / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Here are the vote tallies for Richard Griffin and for David McKeague. Congratulations to them both, and to their families.

Senator Levin gave a speech immediately before those two confirmation votes, summarizing the history of the Sixth Circuit nomination process since 1996. Senator Levin made much of the fact that many Clinton nominees never made it out of committee, and Levin urged everyone to concede that the fate of those Clinton nominees was just as unfair as anything that has happened to Bush's nominees. Senator Specter has also urged everyone to concede that the hands of neither party are clean when it comes to treatment of nominees.

But I just can't help but note that, during Clinton's second term, the opposing party was in the majority. In contrast, Bush's nominees have been obstructed while the opposing party was in the minority. In other words, under Clinton, the decision to obstruct was made by the majority, but under Bush that decision has been made by the minority.

At any time, Senator Levin could have asked the full Senate to discharge nominees who were languishing in committee, but Levin didn't do that when Clinton was President. The reason why Levin didn't exhaust his remedies was because he knew that he would lose an up-or-down discharge vote on the floor of the Senate.

Senator Levin has been consistent: he has avoided up-or-down floor votes on obstructed nominations under both Clinton and Bush. It's true that languishing in committee is an unfortunate and unfair experience for any nominee, but being denied an up-or-down vote after getting out of committee is in an entirely different category of unfairness.