It wasn’t supposed to be this easy. Ever since President-elect Trump won the election, Democrats have promised to use the confirmation process to grill and obstruct his Cabinet picks.
But Trump’s choices for secretary of state, secretary of defense and attorney general all emerged from hearings this week unscathed, and in a strong position to win confirmation. That’s partly because the president-elect picked the right people for the jobs.
Rex Tillerson, the choice to be America’s top diplomat, adumbrated a robust and encouraging new foreign policy that rejects the vacillating inconsistency of President Obama in favor of a more traditional projection of unapologetic American leadership.
He responded with measured respect to provocative questions about human rights violations by Russia from Sen. Marco Rubio. Tillerson said he’d need more information before agreeing with Rubio’s assertion that President Vladimir Putin is a war criminal, while stating clearly that his values were the same as the senator’s.
Retired Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis, Trump’s pick to run the Pentagon, sailed through his confirmation hearing and won bipartisan approval of a waiver from a law that bars former military members from serving as defense secretary within seven years of retiring. Mattis is a rigorous scholar viewed as a possible restraint on the man who wisely nominated him.
Then there was Trump’s choice for attorney general, Jeff Sessions, or Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III as reporters sometimes refer to him in an effort to emphasize his links to the old South and thus taint him with an unjustified smear of racism. The Alabama senator tamed the Judiciary Committee, brushing off hostile questioning related to the stale and long-discredited allegations. Most of Sessions’ inquisitors are old colleagues and friends who couldn’t help but acknowledge that he is a good, decent and competent man. Even the liberal press had to admit that the hearing became something of a love-fest.
New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker took the unprecedented step of testifying against his colleague. But Booker’s testimony was patently a political move; probably the opening shot in his 2020 presidential bid. Booker alleged that Sessions hadn’t shown the “commitment” to civil rights necessary to be attorney general. But Booker himself recently claimed to have been honored by cooperation with Sessions in co-sponsoring a bill to award the Congressional Medal of Honor to the “foot soldiers who marched at Selma.”
Trump should be prepared for some setbacks. As our Byron York has noted, every president for the past 30 years has lost at least one of his nominees during the confirmation process. But the prospects for Tillerson, Mattis and Sessions winning confirmation and receiving Democrats’ votes are strong, as they should be.
On election night, Trump promised the country, “We’re going to get to work immediately for the American people.” His Republican colleagues in the Senate can help him do so by swiftly confirming these nominees.
