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The "world's greatest deliberative body" has just returned Dawn Johnsen's nomination to President Obama without ever holding a vote on it (h/t to The Big Hurt in Quick Hits).
Johnsen's appointment to head the DoJ Office of Legal Counsel has been languishing since March, when the Senate Judiciary Committee reported her nomination to the floor favourably.
Think Progress reports that her nomination was blocked by Ben Nelson and Arlen Specter, plus, one assumes, all Republicans. Specter re-iterated his opposition to Johnsen after joining the Democratic caucus, and Nelson objected to her bizarrely on the (probably contrived) grounds of her views on Abortion (as OLC isn't exactly a major battleground on abortion policy).
It's worth writing about this to make them pay some price for doing this in the ultimate news void time of year, and also to point out that the Senate's many glaring and egregious flaws go deeper than the filibuster. Johnsen was returned along with 5 other Obama nominees, none of whom even got a cloture vote, never mind a floor vote.
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| The reason is simple enough, floor time is precious enough that even a lone Senator willing to exploit every delay tactic possible can defeat a nominee by forcing the Majority leader to spend it on other items deemed more important. Even a 60 Seat caucus can only hold so many cloture votes, and overcome so many filibusters. The result is that the supermajority will give up on many other things, like obscure nominations to subcabinet jobs because the cost of winning isn't believed worth the fight.
As for Johnsen, it's not clear what happened: Would Nelson or Specter actually vote against cloture? Nelson seems more likely of the two, but we'll never know because Reid didn't make him show his hand. Given the need for Nelson's vote on the dicey health reform conference report, was giving up on Johnsen with a whimper yet another price he has extracted?
Whatever the merits some see in empowering the minority to prevent "tyranny of the majority" through anti-democratic means such as the filibuster, it's obvious that such powers should be transparent, and thus when they are used, it should be clear who is doing so, so at least their constituents can decide if their Senators are using the powers to hamper majority rule responsibly. Despite my speculation above, aside from a few Senators and perhaps some Administration insiders, no one knows who blocked Johnsen, exactly why, or what they might have been demanding in exchange for allowing her through. The opacity of the process is a serious problem, on top of the already dubious nature of Senate minority empowering procedures.
The Washington Post did write a good editorial calling for (among others) Johnsen's confirmation, and Pat Leahy has also been vocal, though so far to little avail.
Obama can of course re-nominate Johnsen and the other 5 returned nominees. Whether he does so for any or all of them will be a fairly good clue as to what kind of behind the scenes deal might have been crafted here.
The other 5 were: Mary L. Smith, nominated to be Assistant Attorney General, Christopher H. Schroeder, to be an Assistant Attorney General, Craig Becker, to be Member of the National Labor Relations Board, Edward Milton Chen, to be United States District Judge for the Northern District of California, and Louis B. Butler, Jr., to be United States District Judge for the Western District of Wisconsin. I'm not sure why the WaPo doesn't count it in the 6, but Col. David A. Teeples' nomination to be a Brigadier-General in the Army was also returned on the 24th. |
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