Why ask the Senate?

By Dylan Matthews

At his Washington Post blog, NYU professor Paul Light has a typically smart suggestion for speeding up the appointments process:

Any presidential post that remains vacant for six months should be automatically abolished as a presidential appointment. Once removed from the appointment's roster, it should be filled instead by a member of the career Senior Executive Service. This career executive should be given a 10-year fixed term and be removable only for serious cause. Ten years should give future presidents and the Senate plenty of time to rethink their behavior. Any position that is so trivial that it can remain open for six months is a position that should either be cashed out or filled with someone who intends to stay on the job.

There are cases where I could see this not working. Consider the most infamous recent confirmation delay, that of Lael Brainard to be undersecretary of the Treasury for international affairs. Brainard clearly brings something, through her work in political positions in the Clinton administration and through her time at Brookings, that a career Treasury official would lack. And the undersecretary position generally is an important policymaking post that should have people with policy, rather than administrative, backgrounds filling it.

So while Light's idea works for a number of posts, the long-term solution to this problem is to make far fewer positions Senate confirmable. I don't see any reason deputy, under or assistant secretaries should require Senate approval. The current system merely slows down the confirmation process without leading to any reasoned consideration of nominees. Giving department secretaries total discretion in picking subcabinet officials would allow experts without completely unobjectionable public records to serve, would eliminate the need for torturous vetting processes, and would allow administrations to be staffed much more quickly.

--Dylan Matthews is a student at Harvard and a researcher at The Washington Post.