Minority Rule in the Senate

Fed up with the Senate’s failure to act on his nomination of James C. Hormel to be ambassador to Luxembourg, President Clinton finally used his authority to make appointments while Congress is in recess. Earlier this month he named the San Francisco philanthropist as envoy to the minuscule European duchy. The reaction from the few senators who had prevented a floor vote on the openly gay Hormel’s nomination was, as usual, intemperate. Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) accused Clinton of a “flagrant abuse” of power and vowed to retaliate by blocking the Senate from voting on any of the president’s civilian nominations.

The real abuse of power came from Inhofe and others who took advantage of senatorial custom to prevent a floor vote that almost certainly would have seen Hormel, heir to the meatpacking fortune and a former dean at the University of Chicago Law School, confirmed by the majority of senators.

Inhofe threatened to single-handedly prevent action on most nominations, including such major ones as Lawrence H. Summers to be secretary of the Treasury and Richard C. Holbrooke as ambassador to the United Nations. In late 1997, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) made the same kind of threats over the nomination of Bill Lann Lee as solicitor general. Each case calls attention to the inordinate and antique power that custom gives individual senators to thwart not just the aim of a president but the will of a majority of their colleagues. The blocking tactic was infamously used by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) two years ago to bar the confirmation of a moderate member of his own party, former Massachusetts Gov. William F. Weld, as ambassador to Mexico. But it is not a one-party tactic.

Democrats fought constantly with President Ronald Reagan over his nominees, one reason why Reagan made 243 recess appointments. Many of the battles, like that over Robert H. Bork’s unsuccessful nomination to the Supreme Court, were voted down by the entire Senate after open debate. But some were blocked by arcane tricks like what Inhofe threatens.

The Senate’s constitutional responsibility is to advise and consent on major presidential appointments, a task that implicitly is meant to involve the entire body. When a single senator can sabotage that process, democracy suffers.

The votes of 60 senators can override the abusive privilege claimed by one. A Senate aware of its responsibilities would muster those votes.