What About the 99 Other Senators?

President Clinton’s nomination of former Massachusetts Gov. William F. Weld as ambassador to Mexico is dead. Weld’s merits or flaws were never an issue. The members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which considers ambassadorial nominations, never brought the matter to a head. Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) held a final meeting on the matter Friday and used it to berate his colleagues for even considering going against him. Case closed. Next.

Weld said Monday he asked that the nomination be withdrawn “so I can go back to New England where no one has to approach the government on bended knee to ask it to do its duty.”

Sorrowful words, but they make the point. Helms has been getting away with this dictatorial behavior since 1995, when he became Foreign Relations chairman and began to exercise a personal, exceedingly conservative foreign policy marked by shameful demonstrations of legislative power. In this case, almost defensively, the chairman gave an account of how the rules of the Senate had, to his mind, been properly used to block at least 154 nominations in the past decade. But it’s the Senate, not the Foreign Relations Committee chairman, that is entrusted to advise and consent on ambassadorial appointments. The time has come to look hard at the rules.