The Senate's advice-and-consent role is not a formality

According to CNBC, Attorney General nominee Todd Blanche requires at least fifty votes on the Senate floor to be confirmed, and Senator Susan Collins's opposition represents a potentially decisive blow to that prospect. Many will frame this as political drama. I would ask that we frame it, instead, as constitutional architecture performing its intended function.

The advice-and-consent clause was not drafted as a rubber stamp. I had occasion in Federalist No. 64 to defend the treaty power on similar grounds: that requiring the Senate's deliberate concurrence before the executive could bind the nation was not an obstacle to good government, but its precondition. The confirmation of principal officers of the United States — and the Attorney General, who holds the law of this Republic in trust, is surely among the most consequential — deserves no less rigor than a treaty ratification.

The particular concerns Senator Collins holds regarding Mr. Blanche I cannot assess from this report alone; CNBC's lead speaks to the vote arithmetic, not the underlying objections. I would mark as inference any judgment on the merits of Mr. Blanche's fitness. But the structural point stands regardless of the individual: a chamber of one hundred members, each independently accountable to the people of their state, is not obligated to defer to the executive's preference. Deference is a gift, not a duty.

I would caution those who govern against the habit of treating every dissenting vote within their own coalition as a betrayal. Measured dissent — offered on the floor, subject to debate, answerable to the public record — is the orderly mechanism by which the Republic corrects the enthusiasms of any single faction. A senator who votes her conscience against her party's pressure is not sabotage; she is the system.

What should be done is clear: if Mr. Blanche's nomination is to proceed, his supporters must persuade, not compel, the holdouts. The Attorney General's office demands public confidence across party lines, because its authority extends across party lines. A nominee confirmed over principled objection by fifty votes and one occupies the office lawfully — but public confidence is a separate currency, and one that cannot be printed by majority rule alone. The Senate would do well to weigh that distinction before the final count is taken.