Editors at National Review Online urge the U.S. Senate to reject a request from the incoming president.
President-elect Donald Trump has demanded that the incoming Republican Senate promise to neuter itself so that he can staff up his impending administration without following the well-established constitutional rules. “Any Republican Senator seeking the coveted LEADERSHIP position in the United States Senate,” Trump wrote on TruthSocial, “must agree to Recess Appointments (in the Senate!), without which we will not be able to get people confirmed in a timely manner.” Online, this idea swiftly became a rallying cry for the most fervent among Trump’s fans.
One can comprehend the president-elect’s desire to hit the ground running — especially given that, in our era of sprawling government, there are indeed too many positions that require confirmation. Nevertheless, his request is wholly inappropriate within the American system of government and ought to be rejected with prejudice. Article I of the Constitution requires that the Senate must approve “all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for.” It provides no exceptions to that rule — and nor should it. The core purpose of our unique system of separated powers is to reduce the authority that any one person or faction enjoys within the federal apparatus. Were a prospective Senate majority leader to vow to help Trump get around this arrangement, he would not only be undermining that principle, but doing so by abdicating his own oath of office and weakening the institution that he had been selected to protect. The men who ratified the Constitution understood that liberty was best secured when ambition counteracted ambition. Any senator who proved willing to abandon that ambition in the name of temporary partisan advantage would not be much of a senator at all.
As ever, the arguments being advanced in favor of executive supremacy tend ineluctably toward the demagogic.
