Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein think Obama's 'big win' on nominations last night (which I initially fell for) wasn't so much of a win after all.
Yglesias:
Barack Obama apparently went to Mitch McConnell and threatened a bunch of recess appointments unless the Senate would start confirming some of his nominees. Consequently 27 uncontroversial officials who were being held up for no reason got confirmed. But people who are being held up for a reason, no matter how stupid or petty the reason, are still in limbo. Thus the Shelby Shakedown continues and the Defense Department will still be doing without the services of three well-qualified appointees as Alabama’s least-horrible Senator continues his porking efforts. John Kyl is holding up a diplomatic appointment to a disarmament conference because Kyl loves out-of-control nuclear proliferation and wants to single-handedly sabotage the conference.Ezra Klein:
This is to say nothing of nominees like Craig Becker and Dawn Johnson who are being held up for ideological reasons. So the White House is touting this as a win, but I’m not totally sure what they’ve won. They had it within their power to put all 27 of these people in place with recess appointments and also circumvent the Shelby & Kyl holds with recess appointments and also put Becker & Johnson in office with recess appointments. The authority to do that is right there in the constitution. Given that 41 Senate Republicans are clearly going to hold up 100 percent of Obama’s legislative agenda anyway, I don’t see what else the White House has as a better use of its time than picking a fight over confirmations.
The administration scored a big victory last night, or at least it thinks it did. After President Obama finally threatened to make recess appointments if Senate Republicans didn't let some of its nominees through the confirmation process, the Republicans allowed the Senate to confirm 29 of them last night. As if to thank them, the White House promptly shot itself in the foot.
"On Tuesday," the president said in a statement released last night, "I told Senator McConnell that if Republican senators did not release these holds, I would exercise my authority to fill critically-needed positions in the federal government temporarily through the use of recess appointments. This is a rare but not unprecedented step that many other presidents have taken."
At this point in his presidency, George W. Bush had made 10 recess appointments. Over the course of his presidency, he would make almost 200. Bill Clinton made about 150. In describing recess appointments as "a rare but not unprecedented step," Obama made it harder to actually make any, because he's defined the procedure -- which, unlike the hold, is a defined constitutional power of the president rather than a courtesy observed in the Senate -- as an extraordinary last-resort. He also promised, later in the statement, that he wouldn't make any appointments this recess.
