Appoint Real People, Not Saints

[babylonsister]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-03-25/stop-the-confirmation-humiliation/


Appoint Real People, Not Saints

by Philip K. Howard

snip//

Many excellent candidates have withdrawn when confronted with grilling over nanny taxes, receipts for $20 tax deductions, and demands for every potentially embarrassing email. If a nominee makes it past the White House inquisition, Congress then starts picking them apart, critiquing past business connections or any statement made in a long career. The hypocrisy is breathtaking—the same members of Congress took huge contributions from AIG, Fannie Mae, and big banks. The media then throws its sanctimony onto the bonfire. What sensible person would subject himself to this fury of self-righteousness, reminiscent of the 15th-century religious fanatic Savonarola?

Let’s start over.

Change the goal: We need people who can do the job, not saints. “The force of character,” Emerson observed, “is cumulative.” Character cannot be judged like a perfect score on a multiple choice test. Anyone with an unblemished record that can be objectively proved in agonizing detail is probably someone more focused on self-protection than accomplishment. For the first head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, FDR appointed a Wall Street insider, Joseph P. Kennedy—who better to understand the tricks of Wall Street?

Change the process: Create an independent bipartisan committee to vet character and conflicts, mainly through reference checks. Such a committee can judge people in full, not as an atomistic collection of receipts and isolated life events. Its independent approval will turn down the partisan heat and mute the force of congressional finger-pointing when the occasional nominee turns out to have been a mistake.

Obama set himself up for failure when he pledged that no one with recent lobbying experience would be considered. I’m no fan of lobbyists, but almost any litmus test will work against the public interest, as I believe it did with Tom Daschle. Obama should abandon the perfect virtue standard.

America needs action, not paralysis. The place to start is creating a sensible appointment process that can evaluate people’s strengths as well as their weaknesses.

[On the Road]

1. I Agree with the General Point

but the solution to sorting through hundreds of candidates who rapid approval is to appoint a commission?

:eyes:

[babylonsister]

2. No, a commission would bypass bipartisanship that

foils candidates time and again. A commission doesn't always have to take months. If someone is being vetted on their resume and not what he/she might do once they're in, that would curtail the b.s. these people have been subjected to.