Steve Novick is a committed progressive taking on Gordon Smith for the U.S. Senate. You can find out more at the fighter with the hard left hook at his website and help support his campaign at ActBlue.
On the anniversary of the day that Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, I think it is important to recognize that the U.S. Senate shares responsibility for the failures to respond to Katrina and vow as a U.S. Senator to take all confirmation processes seriously.
Today, our hearts go out to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, whose suffering continues. And of course we say, "Never again." But to make that wish come true, we must pause for a second and reflect on the fact that the blame for the Federal government’s mismanagement of the disaster does not lie solely with George Bush, but also with the United States Senate – and, I am ashamed to say, a Democratic Senate. For the Senate, through the confirmation process, was partly responsible for the elevation of Mike Brown, the failed director of an Arabian horse association, to a position of responsibility for which he was clearly unqualified.
The confirmation of Alberto Gonzales was another failure of the process – but it was largely a partisan one. Many Democrats voted against confirming an advocate of illegal torture as Attorney General. The confirmation of Mike Brown was a bipartisan failure: Nobody complained at all.
The Senate needs to take the confirmation process seriously. It should never be pro forma. Whenever a committee to which I am assigned has to vote on confirmation of a political appointee, I will vote ‘no’ unless I have seen real evidence of the nominee’s qualifications. And when there is a confirmation vote on the floor, I will only vote ‘yes’ if I know that the nominee went through a serious confirmation process in committee.
The Senate confirmation process for Brown was, procedurally, somewhat unusual: Brown was confirmed as Deputy Director of FEMA by a voice vote – after a pro forma hearing in a committee headed by Senator Joseph Lieberman. When FEMA was rolled into the Department of Homeland Security by the Homeland Security Act, the Act provided that people who had already been confirmed in a previous job did not need re-confirmation, even if elevated to a higher post.
But it’s no excuse to say that the guy slipped through the cracks. The Senate should have paid attention to those Deputies. Having served in the Justice Department, I know that the Deputies and Assistants matter; they wield serious power. You can’t just focus on the department heads. And if the Senate does have a practice of confirming deputies without serious scrutiny, they should have thought of that when they passed the Homeland Security Act, and avoided language that could result in incompetents occupying critical positions.
So it could be that the Senate’s primary failure was in trusting Joe Lieberman’s judgment. By now most of us have learned not to trust Joe Lieberman’s judgment. But the Mike Brown episode should serve as a warning to every Senator to pay closer attention to the process.