“ He shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law: but the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments.”
                           United States Constitution, Article II, section 2.

Ari Fleisher, the lame-duck Presidential mouthpiece, announced that the President was not about to consult with members of the Senate prior to sending any Supreme Court nomination to the Hill for confirmation. To do so, he said, would change the Constitution. Like most ideologues who cite the Constitution to justify their principal’s actions, Fleisher seems to be ignorant of its contents. In plain and unambiguous language Article II, section 2 lays out the process by which Presidential appointments are to be made. It does not provide for a simple up or down vote on the part of the Senate, as Fleisher seems to believe, but rather describes a process by which the President is to obtain the collegial advise of the Senators in the process of making the appointment and then must secure the consent of the Senate to the appointment.

Senator Daschle wrote to the President offering that the process begin with bipartisan consultation to select a panel of candidates for any Supreme Court nomination that would ameliorate partisan contention over a nomination and avoid a protracted and divisive partisan battle over the makeup of the most important judicial body, In short, the Democratic Senators offered to provide the Senate’s advise to the President as provided by the Constitution and not, as Fleisher proclaimed, to change the Constitution. That offer was flatly rejected.

It seems that a divisive battle is exactly what the Bush Administration seeks as election year approaches. A Constitutional crisis to serve the partisan interest of the Rovian reelection strategy is more important to the President than the unity of the nation at a time when the Administration’s new, and failing, homeland security efforts are raising fundamental Constitutional issues. A protracted struggle over an ideological appointment may serve the partisan interest of the Republican Party, but it is destructive of the national interest. It will serve only to divide the country and not unite it in a common purpose as the President promised he would do,