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During the convention, it was decided that it would be easier to hold to President accountable for choosing bad nominees than it would be to actually put the blame on certain Senators. In order to prevent the buck from being passed to the next guy, the framers gave the power of nomination to the unitary executive.
But, there was a concern that the President might pick people who were personal friends or who were not the best qualified to serve on the Court. To derail these nominations, the framers made it necessary to receive consent from the Senate for a nominee to be confirmed.
As we saw with Harriet Miers, the system works very well.
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The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
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