As members of the U.S. Senate consider how to vote on CIA Director Mike Pompeo's nomination to be secretary of state, they should take one particularly persuasive quote to heart: "My general rule is that the president gets to choose who he wants or who she wants for their Cabinet members."
Funny thing about Washington: While nearly everyone pays lip service to presidential prerogatives when a president from their party occupies the White House, they become less deferential when the president leads the other party.
In 2011, No Labels released our "Make Congress Work!" reform agenda, in which we wrote: "When our Founders gave the Senate 'Advise and Consent' power over presidential appointments, they hoped it would encourage the president to appoint qualified people and avoid conflicts of interest. Today, it's the senators themselves who seem to have conflicts of interest, with key presidential appointments routinely held up for trivial reasons or to serve the narrow interests of a single senator." We noted at the time the egregious example of Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby putting a blanket hold on 70 Obama administration nominees in order to secure additional funding for his state.
The president is the elected leader of the country, chosen by the nation's citizens through a democratic process to run the executive branch.
Unless someone is blatantly unqualified or ethically suspect, we share former Vice President Biden's principled standard that the president should get to choose his or her Cabinet officials and advisers.
Wouldn't America's best interests be served by our president having a trusted secretary of state by his side? More than a few senators apparently don't think so.
Mike Pompeo might not have been the choice any number of the nation's senators would have made had they been elected president.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/04/24/on_pompeo_hypocrisy_reigns_136884.html
Funny thing about Washington: While nearly everyone pays lip service to presidential prerogatives when a president from their party occupies the White House, they become less deferential when the president leads the other party.
In 2011, No Labels released our "Make Congress Work!" reform agenda, in which we wrote: "When our Founders gave the Senate 'Advise and Consent' power over presidential appointments, they hoped it would encourage the president to appoint qualified people and avoid conflicts of interest. Today, it's the senators themselves who seem to have conflicts of interest, with key presidential appointments routinely held up for trivial reasons or to serve the narrow interests of a single senator." We noted at the time the egregious example of Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby putting a blanket hold on 70 Obama administration nominees in order to secure additional funding for his state.
The president is the elected leader of the country, chosen by the nation's citizens through a democratic process to run the executive branch.
Unless someone is blatantly unqualified or ethically suspect, we share former Vice President Biden's principled standard that the president should get to choose his or her Cabinet officials and advisers.
Wouldn't America's best interests be served by our president having a trusted secretary of state by his side? More than a few senators apparently don't think so.
Mike Pompeo might not have been the choice any number of the nation's senators would have made had they been elected president.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/04/24/on_pompeo_hypocrisy_reigns_136884.html
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