Our Constitution assumes a certain level of good faith on the part of people who participate in public life. It is not a system that can preside over a state of civil war. So throughout our history, there have been unwritten norms of conduct that grow out of a simple imperative: if we want to have a functioning democracy, a certain degree of cooperation between the parties is mandatory.
But in recent years, the Democratic Party has in effect declared a state of war against the rest of us. They have abandoned, one after another, the informal norms that allow our democracy to function. Rather than viewing Republicans as fellow citizens with whom they have disagreements, but with whom they share a common interest in the well-being of our nation, they see Republicans as enemies whose objects are entirely different from theirs and who, therefore, must be fought at every turn.
A case in point is the Democrats’ effort to block President Trump from staffing his administration. Historically, both parties have assumed that a president has the right to staff his administration with nominees of his choosing. Thus, while nominees occasionally have been controversial, routine staff decisions have gone forward without opposition. The Democrats have renounced this tradition, as this chart by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity shows:
Senate Republicans may finally have had enough of unprecedented Democratic obstructionism. The Democrats have required a lengthy process of cloture and final passage votes for every single nominee, grinding the Senate to a halt and keeping hundreds of qualified nominees from getting on the job now well into Trump’s term.
I was on the committee that vetted U.S. Attorney and U.S. Marshal candidates in Minnesota. Our committee made its recommendations in January, and President Trump sent his U.S. Attorney nomination to the Senate in May. It would have been sooner if the Senate had not been backed up with prior nominations. But so far, neither the U.S. Attorney position nor the U.S. Marshal position has been filled. This is the rule, not the exception, around the country.
What to do about the Democrats’ obstructionism?
If Democrats don’t relent and let Trump get his team on the job, Senate Republicans should change the rules to limit the hours of debate and allow multiple nominees to be approved together. Trump deserves to have his team in place.
The Democrats’ conduct would be a scandal if they had a Senate majority. The fact that they are engaging in unprecedented obstructionism when they are in the minority should not be tolerated.
