Trump picks need extreme vetting
Senate committees have planned hearings this week on nine of President-elect Donald Trump’s most important cabinet appointees, including his nominees for secretary of State, secretary of Defense and attorney general. On Wednesday — a day when Trump is already expected to dominate news coverage by holding his first formal news conference since July — no fewer than five confirmation hearings are likely to be in progress.
Democrats in the Senate are understandably furious that the nominees are being rushed through the confirmation process and insist they won’t receive the searching scrutiny they require . ... And there were significant reasons not to rush confirmation of some of Trump’s nominees.
For one thing, some nominees haven’t completed a required ethics review. The fact that Trump’s proposed Cabinet includes so many wealthy individuals makes such a review both challenging and important. The potential conflicts of interests are enormous and the Senate needs to consider them carefully.
Furthermore, these candidates require “extreme vetting.” They could end up being unusually important and influential because the president they will serve has no government experience whatsoever and will be especially reliant on his advisers. On top of that, many of them have no experience in government to provide insight into how they would discharge public responsibilities . ...
Another reason for greater diligence by the Senate is that some Trump nominees seem uncomfortable with, if not hostile to, the core missions of the departments they have been chosen to administer.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, the Alabama Republican nominated to be attorney general, for instance, would be responsible for supervising the Civil Rights Division and enforcing what is left of the Voting Rights Act — a law he once suggested was an intrusion on states’ rights (though he voted to extend it in 2006) . ...
Likewise, philanthropist Betsy DeVos, whom Trump has nominated to be secretary of Education, is such a fierce advocate of charter schools and vouchers for private schools that her commitment to traditional public education has been called into question . ...
The president-elect has made it clear that he intends to seek advice from an influential “kitchen cabinet” of friends, family members and business associates. (On Monday it was reported that Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, would join the White House as an unpaid “senior adviser.”)
Cabinet members and other officials who must receive Senate confirmation aren’t mere creatures of the president; they have an obligation to the Congress and the country to abide by the commitments they make in the confirmation process. In this unorthodox administration it is especially important that those officials be men and women of character, intelligence and good judgment.