Alexander Hamilton, that is. Here is a particularly relevant section of The Federalist Papers #76 that every senator ought to re-read. Hamilton is explaining the benefits and drawbacks of each of the three options for dealing with appointments. Those options, as he sees them, are: let one man (the executive) make absolute appointments; assign the duty to a deliberative body (the Senate); or have the executive appoint a nominee for consideration by the Senate. Hamilton and the Founding Fathers chose the last of these. Here is why:
To what purpose then require the co-operation of the Senate? I answer, that the necessity of their concurrence would have a powerful, though, in general, a silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity. In addition to this, it would be an efficacious source of stability in the administration.
It will readily be comprehended, that a man who had himself the sole disposition of offices, would be governed much more by his private inclinations and interests, than when he was bound to submit the propriety of his choice to the discussion and determination of a different and independent body, and that body an entire branch of the legislature. The possibility of rejection would be a strong motive to care in proposing. The danger to his own reputation, and, in the case of an elective magistrate, to his political existence, from betraying a spirit of favoritism, or an unbecoming pursuit of popularity, to the observation of a body whose opinion would have great weight in forming that of the public, could not fail to operate as a barrier to the one and to the other.
He would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative stations, candidates who had no other merit than that of coming from the same State to which he particularly belonged, or of being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure.
Of course Hamilton foresaw a stronger balance between the branches of government, not a balance between two parties (which had not yet materialized by 1788). What we lack today is a Senate that sees itself as a check on the executive's less than qualified appointments. Instead we see senators afraid to voice any opposition to Miers on the grounds of the obvious and blatant cronyism that earned her this nomination, and instead deciding if they should oppose her because she might not be as far to the right as they would have hoped. There is something seriously wrong with this.
Honest Democrats should oppose Miers because the country deserves better justices. Republicans should do the same. The first questions every senator should clear up before anything else are: "Is the nominee qualified to fulfill the responsibilities of the office? Is this person the most qualified person for the position?" If not, the ideology of the nominee shouldn't even be in play.
It seems both sides have forgotten Hamilton's sage founding words.
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