Recess Appointments

Audio version of Recess Appointments 

Allow me to tell you some stuff you already know.

Travel these days is pretty easy, especially compared to travel a couple of hundred years or so ago. Back then there were no airplanes or airports. The surface vehicles mostly had one or two horse power in that they were being pulled by one or two horses. If you were lucky, you might get to make the majority of the trip via train but, that is a train with no HVAC and not a ton of speed.

Yep, as far as travel goes, things are far better now than back when - say, the Constitution was being written. Pretty obvious so far, right?

As it turns out, in general there have been some pretty large technological changes in human culture not just in the transportation sector. But we need to acknowledge that back when the Constitution was being written, there was no Zoom, no telephones - mobile or otherwise, no digital file sharing. To effectively collaborate with someone or several someones, you really needed to be in the same building.

In the early days of the US government, there was a lot of collaboration going on. But most of those doing the collaboration did not live in the same specific area as their collaborators. The distance of separation could be miles or several hundreds of miles. Several hundred miles of travel using one or two horsepower can take a while. Also, bad shit could happen along the way. So the collaborators attempted to make sure that the functioning of the government did not stop just because of some travel hassles on the part of current or future officials or collaborators.

I find it incredibly unlikely that they intended their efforts to be used as a means of circumventing the other rules, laws and guidelines they put into place.

Look, if during a Congressional break, the Secretary of Defense has a stroke and dies, yes the POTUS should make an appointment during the recess to keep us fully staffed. However, if there is a strong chance that the Senate will advise POTUS to not hire a given individual OR they appear to be heading towards declining that individual's confirmation, it was almost assuredly not the intent of the founders that recess appointments be uses as a means of circumventing the Senate. They were there at the beginning. If they did not want the Senate to have that responsibility, they could have left it out.

Unfortunately partisan divisions have functioned as predicted by some of the founders and candidates that are to all appearances fully qualified for the position have been blocked as a means of wielding undeserved power. Also unfortunately, unqualified candidates have been installed by waiting until Congress recesses. Rather obviously we need to watch out for this and avoid it when we can. However, the Senate needs to take their "advice and consent" mandate seriously and carefully evaluate each candidate and confirm or deny as appropriate. Assuming the Senate (at least in part) feels like they can willfully abdicate that responsibility, the citizenry is not doing their job.