Daschling Bush hopes?

The truth squad will be busy as Senate Democrats attempt to shut down the confirmation of President Bush's judicial nominees.

Democrats are developing public relations gimmicks designed to justify their obstruction. Topping the list is the claim that Republicans blocked President Clinton's nominees. Whether true or false, this claim appeals to that age-old character flaw, the desire for revenge. A more powerful cultural indictment would be hard to find than our leaders using this base instinct to drive their agenda.

Four weeks ago, this column exposed the claim by Sen. Patrick Leahy, now Judiciary Committee Chairman, that Republicans "held up 167 judicial nominations by the end of the Clinton administration." Data from unbiased, non-partisan sources such as the Congressional Research Service show this claim is exaggerated by nearly 65 percent. No more than 102 Clinton nominees remained unconfirmed during the six years (1995-2000) that Republicans ran the Senate.

Senator Leahy then tagged in the Democrat leaders of the full Senate. The analysis here of their most recent false claims is not just an interesting statistical adventure. It demonstrates what Democrats will do to deceive the American people.

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On June 9, the New York Times quoted Majority Leader Tom Daschle claiming that 45 percent of President Clinton's appeals court nominees did not receive a final Senate vote. The next day on CNN, Assistant Majority Leader Harry Reid went even further, claiming that "[f]ifty-five percent of President Clinton's judicial nominations to the appellate court were turned down." The depth of this deception is difficult to describe.

Where a legislature is concerned, "turned down" to most people means voted down or defeated. No doubt this is the impression Reid intended to leave, since it paints the starkest picture most helpful to the Democrats' revenge strategy. Yet President Clinton had a 374-1 judicial appointment run during his eight years in office. The Senate "turned down" just a single nominee, voting 55-45 against the nomination of Ronnie White to the U.S. District Court. Far from defeating 55 percent of President Clinton's appellate court nominees, the Senate did not turn down even a single one.

As an aside, President Clinton's 374 appointments are second only in American history to President Reagan's 378. Each faced a Republican Senate for six of his eight years in office.

Perhaps by "turned down," Reid's claim actually parallels Daschle's – namely, that the Senate denied confirmation not by a negative final vote but by holding no vote at all. This version is similarly false.

Definitive data on President Clinton's judicial nominations appear in a CRS report dated Feb. 21, 2001. Readers will search in vain not only for the conclusions claimed by Daschle and Reid, but any data that could possibly lead to those conclusions. The report states that the Senate confirmed 65 of President Clinton's 106 nominees to the U.S. Court of Appeals during his eight years in office. Even lawyers elected to the Senate, however, should be able to do simple math; right off the bat, this turns out to be 39 percent, not 45 percent or 55 percent. Only by tossing into the equation nine re-nominations by Clinton after the 107th Congress convened in January, but before his successor's inauguration, does the figure even get to 43 percent. Considering these at all is totally illegitimate; every incoming president (including Bill Clinton) withdraws such 11th hour re-nominations.

Even without considering them, however, the raw aggregate numbers are bogus for determining how many Clinton appeals court nominees the Senate did not confirm. First, the total of 106 includes 22 nominees made during the 103rd Congress (1993-1994) when Democrats ran the Senate. Second, the resulting total of 84 double- and even triple-counts individuals nominated but not confirmed in one Congress and then re-nominated in the next Congress. The CRS report itself states that "most … of the persons whose nominations were returned at the end" of a Congress "were later re-nominated and ultimately confirmed." So Sens. Leahy, Daschle, and Reid are counting as "held up" or "turned down" many individuals the Senate in fact confirmed and who are now serving as federal judges!

The CRS data show that President Clinton nominated 68 individuals to the U.S. Court of Appeals during 1995-2000, when Republicans ran the Senate. He withdrew four of these nominations himself and the Senate confirmed 41 of the rest. Three of the unconfirmed nominees were nominated so late that, under CRS's own standards, they should not be counted because they could not have been confirmed. Without all the smoke, mirrors and fake numbers, the truth is that the Republican-led Senate failed to vote on 20 of the 68 nominations they could have confirmed. That's 29 percent. Daschle had a margin of error of 55 percent and Reid blew it by a whopping 90 percent.

These are just the latest claims intended to justify the Democrats' confirmation obstruction campaign. The truth is starkly different. When Democrats last ran the Senate during the first year of a Bush presidency, they set the modern record for the fewest annual confirmations. In 1989, Democrats confirmed just 15 Bush nominees. The Democrat-led Senate closed the Bush presidency in 1992 refusing to confirm 55 judicial nominees. By contrast, the Republican-led Senate closed the Clinton presidency last year refusing to confirm 41 judicial nominees.

Revenge is hardly a legitimate basis for something as significant as the judicial confirmation process. The only thing worse is revenge based on lies. Stripped of its false "victim" rhetoric, the Democrat revenge obstruction campaign is simply the same partisan power politics Democrats say they want to abandon. As a result, judicial vacancies are in the triple digits while Democrats stop at nothing to keep President Bush from appointing the kind of balanced, fair judges that American needs.