Senate Republican Cautions Trump on Delaying Todd Blanche Nomination

The takes

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  Adam Smith

  1723–1790, Scotland (the Scottish Enlightenment: Kirkcaldy, Glasgow, Edinburgh)

  The Attorney General as Chess Piece

  When rulers threaten to delay justice for tactical advantage, they treat a great office as a bargaining counter, and discover too late that the other pieces move of themselves.

  The episode is easily told. A president, facing resistance within his own political allies to his chosen attorney general, muses aloud that he might withdraw the nomination and present it again in a later year, when those troublesome critics may be gone and the chamber more compliant. A senior senator, no enemy but an ally, gently reminds him that an election lies between now and then, and that “this place could be very different” when the time comes. One man plays at postponement; another points to uncertainty. Between them, though they do not name it, stands the whole public interest in the steady administration of justice.

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  John Locke

  1632–1704, England (writing amid the Exclusion Crisis and the Glorious Revolution)

  When a President Turns Confirmation Into a Threat

  A ruler who wields nomination as a weapon against the legislative forgets that all his power is held only on trust, and begins to walk the road from government toward usurpation.

  The report that a president, displeased with critics in the Senate, threatens to withdraw his nominee for attorney general now and resubmit him years hence, in order to circumvent those critics, may appear to many a familiar bargain of politics; to me it reveals something more serious. Here is not merely the choosing of a fit officer, but the deliberate use of delay and re‑nomination as a rod held over the representatives themselves, backed by the uncertain prospect that “this place could be very different” after an election. Whenever the magistrate turns an ordinary constitutional process into a lever to bend the legislative, we must ask by what right, and for whose good, he does so.

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  Niccolò Machiavelli

  1469–1527, Florence (republican secretary and diplomat, then exile, amid the Italian Wars)

  A Prince Who Gambles His Attorney General on November’s Dice

  By threatening to delay his attorney general’s confirmation until 2027, the prince bets his own arms and reputation on fortune, and chooses the very middle course that ruins rulers.

  The scene is simple enough. A president threatens to pull his chosen attorney general, Todd Blanche, from consideration now and resubmit him in 2027, hoping to escape critics in his own party. A senior senator on the judiciary committee answers with a cold shower: the Senate after November “could be very different.” In those few words you have the whole drama of princely power in a republic, stripped of costume. One man is trying to bend an institution to his will by timing and threat; the institution replies, in its dry way, that time does not belong to him.

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