Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Bruce Ackerman is unhappy that lots of powerful executive branch appointments can be made without Senate approval:

Modern presidents have increasingly gained the power to make key appointments unilaterally — with President Obama taking this process to new heights. His White House czars such as Lawrence Summers and Carol Browner are likely to overshadow the Cabinet secretaries in their respective domains. Yet, as presidential assistants, they escape the need for Senate scrutiny.

….Consider, for example, the treatment accorded Eric Holder as attorney general and Gregory Craig as counsel to the president. Holder was carefully vetted by the Senate, and his work in previous administrations was the subject of much debate. Yet Craig, who will also be involved in important and public legal matters, largely escaped scrutiny. Why?

Craig, a distinguished lawyer and public servant, is an outstanding choice for his key position. But it is not enough to trust the president to make good appointments. The challenge is to make it difficult for future presidents to appoint less-qualified officials — such as Alberto Gonzales or Harriet Miers — without serious outside review of their credentials. That, after all, is the aim of our system of checks and balances.

Ackerman has a point, but here’s a different suggestion: how about doing away with Senate confirmation entirely? It wastes tons of committee time, it promotes endless grandstanding by bloviating pols, it discourages all but the hardiest from working for the government, and — most important of all — it doesn’t actually seem to produce a better class of appointees, does it?  Is the country really better off with a system that confirms Alberto Gonzales but deep sixes Tom Daschle?  Has the White House staff, on average, been any less competent or less honest in recent years than the Senate-confirmed cabinet staff?  Does the Senate, as Ackerman would like, really make it difficult for presidents to appoint underqualified officials?

The Senate would never agree to give up its precious consent privilege, of course, but I’m frankly not sure they add much to the process these days.  In the meantime, allowing the president to have a White House staff of his choosing — whether I like his choices or not — seems more important than providing yet more cannon fodder for the greatest deliberative body in the world.  They’ve got plenty to chew on already.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate