Democrats are bracing for a contentious confirmation hearing on Jan. 15 when attorney general nominee Eric Holder will take his place in the hot seat before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Republicans have harshly criticized Holder about his role in former President Bill Clinton’s controversial pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich and will undoubtedly take advantage of the confirmation hearing to grill him on it. They’ll also ask some tough questions about clemency granted to four members of the Armed Forces of Puerto Rican Nationalists, also known as FALN, and what role Holder played in that.
Holder is widely expected to be confirmed, but only after what is sure to be an episode of great political theater. Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, the Judiciary Committee’s ranking Republican, set the stage last week when he castigated Holder on Rich, FALN, and other issues. Holder’s “outstanding academic and professional record aside,” he said, “…There is also the issue of character. Sometimes it is more important for the attorney general to have the stature and the courage to say no instead of to say yes.â€
Maryland Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin, who also sits on the committee, says he’s puzzled about why Republicans want to challenge Holder.
“If you look at his record of recommendations and independent actions over expanded investigations that weren’t terribly popular with the Clinton administration, he’s clearly been a person who’s exercised strong judgment and placed public responsibility first,†Cardin says. “I’m surprised that Republicans are targeting his nomination and don’t understand why because they’ve shared [Democrats’] frustrations with the Bush administration’s record at the Department of Justice.â€
Brian Darling, director of Senate relations at the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation, says that the judiciary committee has a long-held tradition of intense questioning of attorney general and judicial nominees.
“If you look at high-profile confirmation hearings over the past few years, they seem to all happen in the Senate Judiciary Committee, whether the nominees are Republicans or Democrats.â€
According to Darling,
Holder will also be questioned on his decision-making process on Fourth Amendment rights issues such as the case of Elian Gonzalez, who was allegedly seized at gunpoint from his Miami family’s home in 2000.“Obviously most pundits expect him to be confirmed, but we don’t know whether he’ll answer these questions directly or hide behind executive privilege on his actions when he was number two at the justice department,†Darling says. “That could be a problem and cause the hearing to go on for a lot longer than expected.â€
Most of President-elect Barack Obama’s cabinet nominees will sail through their confirmation hearings easily, but some, such as Treasury secretary nominee Tim Geithner can expect a hard line of questioning.
Members of the Senate Banking Committee, for example, will be seeking specifics on his role in the recent financial bailouts. They’ll also want to know where Geithner stands on such issues as securities industry regulation, how best to stimulate the economy, and how to provide relief to ordinary citizens.
“Both Democrats and Republicans feel like something was put over on them and that the Bush administration wasn’t forthcoming and honest with them, and they don’t want to get fooled again. They’re concerned that Geithner was part of the decision-making process on some of these bailouts and they’re going to want to ensure that we don’t move forward with billions of dollars more in corporate welfare,†says Darling.
Cardin believes that the confirmation should be viewed as more of a desire to develop yardsticks and an understanding of a nominee’s vision for how an agency should move forward than a challenge on his or her qualifications. He says, “We want to establish benchmarks and get an understanding of how the nominee will approach a particular problem. It’s not so much to challenge their qualifications to serve or even to make decisions about whether to support them or not as it is to determine their priorities.â€
The incoming Obama administration recently
experienced a setback when New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson withdrew his nomination to become commerce secretary because of a federal investigation of state contracts awarded to a political contributor.“You do wonder what went on there and would have thought the investigation would have come up. There was an assumption by Obama’s team that Richardson had already been vetted as a presidential candidate, so they didn’t have to do a whole lot. They slipped up,†says Michael Tanner, a Cato Institute senior fellow.
He believes that Obama has built up enough good will that he won’t be hurt by the Richardson withdrawal. It may, however, hurt Democrats in general, because it adds to an emerging pattern of cultural corruption that includes Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and New York Rep. Charlie Rangel, who is facing an ethics probe. “This doesn’t help the Democratic brand. They were supposed to be different from Republicans and now they’re looking more like them,†Tanner says.