When the Senate forgets its office

The Washington Examiner reports that Senators Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas placed holds on the nomination of Todd Blanche to serve as Attorney General of the United States, and only lately lifted them. The piece frames this as personal grievance — senators disgruntled, the column says, over matters that have little to do with whether the nominee is fit to hold the office.

I am told nothing in the reports that speaks to Mr. Blanche's merits or deficiencies as a lawyer or an administrator. I will not weigh in on the man. What I will weigh in on is the conduct of the institution.

Advice and consent is not a lever a senator pulls to extract private satisfaction. It is a structural check — designed so that the executive cannot fill the great offices of government with mere loyalists, unchallenged. When senators use that check for reasons unrelated to the fitness of the nominee, they do two injuries at once: they degrade the check itself, and they model for the citizenry that the machinery of the Republic is simply another instrument of personal or factional advantage. Both injuries compound over time.

I spent a long career watching men of genuine ability tie themselves to faction until they could no longer act except as faction commanded. The senators who placed those holds — whatever their original reasons — should ask themselves a plain question: am I acting as a trustee of the Republic, or as a party in a private quarrel dressed in public clothes? The Washington Examiner's headline accuses them of spiting America to spite a president. I would put it more temperately, but the civic concern beneath that accusation is legitimate.

The office of Attorney General is not a minor appointment. It is the officer charged with the faithful execution of the law for all citizens equally — a responsibility so grave that it demands the Senate's most serious attention, not its most convenient delay. If the nominee is unfit, say so plainly and vote no. If he is fit, confirm him and let the law proceed. What serves neither course is a hold born of grievance and lifted when the political weather shifted.

The counsel I would offer the Senate — and any deliberative body in any age — is this: treat each confirmation as a question about the Republic's needs, not your own. The office you hold is temporary. The precedent you set is not.