Lieberman: Senate should fulfill constitutional duty, confirm Mike Pompeo

CIA Director Mike Pompeo’s nomination to become our 70th secretary of State is encountering significant opposition in the Senate. The vote seems to be breaking along partisan lines which is contrary to precedent for this important position and bad for our country because it sends a message of internal division to our allies and adversaries around the world.

Pompeo’s academic and professional credentials are stellar. He graduated first in his class from West Point, and served as a U.S. Army cavalry officer. Later, he graduated from Harvard Law School, as an editor at the Harvard Law Review. Afterwards, he was successful in business, co-forming an aerospace company and serving as president of an oilfield equipment company.

{mosads}During Mike Pompeo’s three terms in the House of Representatives, he became known as a thoughtful voice on national security, serving on the House Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Intelligence Subcommittee on the CIA. While in the House, he focused on homeland security and the War on Terror, sponsoring numerous bills to contain Iranian aggression.

For the last 15 months, Pompeo has served as director of the CIA. His tenure there has been considered broadly successful, including efforts to pare bureaucracy and squeeze North Korea’s supply routes. Pompeo delivered President Trump’s daily intelligence briefings, giving him insight about emerging security threats and how the president comprehends them. These briefings earned him the trust of the president, crucial to the success of any cabinet member. This president’s confidence in Pompeo is such that he dispatched Pompeo to handle the sensitive portfolio of meeting with North Korean despot Kim Jong Un earlier this month.

Given his strong background, Pompeo is certainly qualified to be secretary of State. His narrow path to confirmation in the Senate isn’t a reflection on his qualifications; instead, it reflects our country’s growing political polarization.

The Senate has had a tradition of confirming nominations for national security positions unless there is some reason to believe the nominee is unqualified for the position. Senators normally set aside differences on policies and politics. In fact, both of President Obama’s nominees for secretary of State, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, were confirmed with 94 votes in the Senate. That meant that a lot of Republicans who disagreed with them on foreign policy or less relevant subjects voted for them because the president had nominated them and they were both qualified to carry out the responsibilities of the office.

The Advise and Consent clause of the Constitution says that the president has the power to appoint cabinet officials “by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate.” The power to “Advise and Consent” is fundamentally different from the power of nomination, which remains the president’s alone. Accordingly, senators vote on a nominee’s overall fitness for a position — and not to indicate whether they would have made the same nomination themselves.

“Advise and Consent” was not intended to devolve into a partisan debate that hinges on the party affiliation of the nominee. Determining who should fill cabinet posts is the right and responsibility of the president. The Senate’s role is to determine whether the nominee is fit to perform the responsibilities of the position. Given his experience in the U.S. Army, in business, in Congress and at the CIA, Pompeo clearly is.

The Advise and Consent clause has become increasingly used in these hyper-partisan times as another way for senators to prove their conservative or liberal bona fides to their political bases. This risks turning every nomination into an exercise in ideological posturing. It is time to time to return to the traditional understanding of “advise and consent,” putting the national interest above partisanship — and judging simply if the candidate can do the job. Director Pompeo has shown he can. He deserves confirmation.

Joseph Lieberman served Connecticut as a Democrat in the U.S. Senate from 1989-2013.