The Chavez exit

Linda Chavez assured her own departure as nominee for secretary of labor when she failed during the initial vetting process to tell George Bush’s team about her harboring and, essentially, employing an illegal alien in the early 1990s. But she was correct Tuesday about the “search and destroy” atmosphere that now surrounds presidential nominations. Both political parties should recognize the destructive effect this has on government.

There were plenty of reasons for senators to have concerns about Ms. Chavez, from her views on issues such as a fair minimum wage and the Family and Medical Leave Act to her lack of experience to her sneering attitude toward those who disagreed with her. But her footnote in the Bush administration will include only that she housed a Guatemalan woman between 1991 and 1993, and that the woman helped around the house and was given money by Ms. Chavez. The Bush team knows that in Washington today there is no attempt to balance clear misjudgments against a nominee’s achievements and philosophy; team members came nowhere near Ms. Chavez’s departing press conference.

Ms. Chavez is being compared with Zoe Baird, one of President Clinton’s nominees for attorney general who was found to have employed a nanny without paying Social Security taxes. But in what has been an excrutiatingly long payback for the mistreatment of Robert Bork in 1987, Republicans have been attacking Clinton nominees for any real or perceived misstep during the last eight years. Dozens of nominees – for Cabinet posts, judgeships, ambassadorships – have had their lives trashed because senators knew they could get away with it while scoring political points. The attacks have moved beyond an individual action to avenge the previous wrong of the Bork hearings and have become part of congressional culture.

The withdrawal of Ms. Chavez was so swift because she and the Bush team understood this culture would bar her from serving. But Congress might keep in mind that the public supported President Clinton even when he was found to have lied to a court about his extramarital affairs and it elected George Bush and Dick Cheney though they have five minor arrests between them. Apparently, the “search and destroy” packs in Washington have concluded that subordinates must meet a higher standard of behavior than their bosses, a standard that members of Congress are regularly found not to meet themselves.

A couple of years ago, Chief Justice William Rehnquist scolded the Senate because the obstruction of judicial nominees had gotten so bad, he said, that the number of unfilled judgeships were hurting the cause of justice in the nation. He could have added that this needlessly destructive course was hurting government’s other two branches, as well: the presidency, by attacking the respect the institution deserves; and the Congress, by allowing the arrogance of power to ignore fairness and scorn the imperfections in us all.