Confirmation Hearings? Help a guy out here.
 

Can someone explain the whole US confirmation hearing thing? I don't get it.

The president nominates someone, and then they get interviewed on television and asked questions that are unanswerable or irrelevant...

Does everybody have to agree to hire the person?
Is it a given, and just a gauntlet the candidate has to run through?

Is this like our appointed Senate in Canada, where the PM just picks people, and they serve for life? Is that what confirmation hearings are for? If so, I understand that. Maybe we need them up here, too.

If I am waaaaay off the mark, please advise.

The US Senate must 'approve' many of the people the President nominates.

Essentially by a simple majority vote.

This happens after the relevant Senate Committe convenes (if necc) a hearing and then if approved (also by majority vote, and the party in power always has a majority in every committe), forwards the nomination to the full Senate for a confirmation vote.

The Senate also has some rules designed to prevent the majority party from rail roading through legislation and or other Senate Business, by requiring a super majority before a full Senate Vote can be taken. This is the cloture and or philibuster that you often hear about these days.

Hope this helps.

-bear

In more formal terms, this is the system of "checks and balances" that the three branches of the US government have on each other to help prevent any one branch from becoming too powerful.

Carrying on with Lebell's post, the constitution gives the president the right of nomination and the senate is given the right of consent. The check and balance, if you will.

The hearing committee vets the nominee, and a simple majority in approval sends the nominee before the senate for confirmation. This is by no means a slam dunk. As we saw today, Harriet Miers had such wide opposition that she chose to withdraw and didn't even make it to committee hearings. John Roberts, on the other hand, was immenently qualified and sailed through the committee and senate confirmation.

On the third hand :), was the Clarence Thomas nomination. He was not qualified for the position according to the ABA, and had some nasty sexual harrassment charges brought against him at the time. Pro wrestling would be considered tame in comparison. None-the-less, he now sits on the court.

Where's the confusion, Ben? :lol:

The Constitutional Convention was concerned with the President having too much authority (remember they were still smarting from King George III), so they decided that nominations to certain offices should be subject to the "advice and consent" of the Senate, to ensure adequate oversight.

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.

I wish it had worked as well with Clarence Thomas. He was a "quota" replacement of a well respected progressive black judge. Nominating an unqualified conservative black lawyer demeans the nomination process to the supreme court. Nominating Miers to replace O'Connor was another "quota" choice, and certainly not the best to be found as Bush claims.

There must be many other more qualified individuals for the Supreme Court than those two. Political "quota" choices should be an affront to all of us.

thanks guys. I think I get it now.

I just see people sitting with microphones, and a panel of really ugly people asking questions, and then the person being interviewed talks a looooong time about nothing.

I understand the whole "Checks and Balances" thing. That clears it up.