A Short History of Failed Presidential Cabinet Appointees
President Tyler holds the record: four Cabinet nominees withdrawing or being rejected. Will Obama match that?
With President Obama’s admission of “screwing up” after the withdrawal of Tom Daschle as potential secretary of Health and Human Services, the new chief executive is quickly approaching a record of dubious distinction. Over the storied history of our nation, the failure of presidential cabinet appointees to take their seats has been rare and generally far less contentious than those of the current era. (For purposes of mathematical accuracy, we shall omit the near simultaneous departure of Nancy Killefer, as she was not technically destined for the cabinet before “tax issues” tanked her advancement.) To place Obama’s selections in context, a brief look at the Congressional record is in order.
From the founding of our nation through the tenure of George W. Bush, a grand total of twenty cabinet nominees have departed the stage without serving in their intended office. Nine were rejected by the Senate and eleven withdrew of their own accord. It took until 1970 for that number to reach 14, with the remaining six taking place since Lyndon Johnson was in office.
Previous failures strike me as more compelling than the current crop. Be they sinister figures or innocent victims of circumstance, they leap off the pages of history as engaging actors in the tale of America. Their stories stand in sharp contrast to the mundane and tawdry tax cheats, shadowy influence peddlers, and pay-to-play artists we are saddled with today.
Historical reasons for personal recusal ran the gamut from the mundane to the perfidious, beginning with the little-noted Lucius Stockton, selected as secretary of war under John Adams in 1801. Later, Andrew Johnson sought to seat Thomas Ewing for a third term in the War Department, but the Senate was outraged at Johnson’s firing of Edwin Stanton and refused to act on the proposal. Ewing left the field of battle in disgust.
Rejections by the Senate were slightly more rare, but generally failed to reach the levels of real or perceived malice and mendacity demonstrated by modern candidates. Roger Taney lost his confirmation battle for the position of secretary of the treasury for being a “stooped, sallow, cringing tool of Jacksonian power.” None of this, however, prevented him from becoming the fifth chief justice of the Supreme Court and soiling his legacy by penning the majority opinion in Dred Scott.
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Jazz Shaw is a heretical, Northeastern former RINO and regular columnist at The Moderate Voice. He can be reached at jazzshaw@gmail.com.
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11 Comments
1. Marc Malone:I hear another is on the way. A CA Congresswoman who lobbied her fellows while a Congresscritter without disclosure. A big no-no. A two-fer: a lobbyist and a cheat. You go, Obama. Great call! Doh!
Feb 5, 2009 - 2:16 am 2. Cybergeezer:Hey! We’re makin’ history here!
Feb 5, 2009 - 7:18 am 3. Marc Malone:#2 Cybergeezer – Funny!
Feb 5, 2009 - 1:49 pm 4. DONALD:Surely Obam can find a democrat that paid their taxes. These people think they are above the law and taxes are for all us luck box Joe’s, I guess.
Feb 5, 2009 - 8:23 pm 5. DONALD:Hey, I can spell. It’s lunch box Joe’s
Feb 5, 2009 - 8:24 pm 6. njcommuter:Not to defend either Slick Willy or illegal aliens, but doesn’t this show that the bookkeeping and administrative responsibilities of our present tax system are too much for the average person … and most citizens are, more or less, average persons?
Feb 5, 2009 - 11:24 pm 7. Marc Malone:Uh, no. I find that most people puzzle it out pretty well. That statement includes the Dem tax cheats. They knew.
Feb 6, 2009 - 12:41 am 8. Robert E.:“When one seeks to appoint candidates to positions of power, we expect the president’s team to avail themselves of current research tools and to find persons of unimpeachable repute.”
Does anyone else get the feeling that maybe highly qualified, unimpeachable candidates just don’t want to work for this administration?
Feb 6, 2009 - 11:38 am 9. Marc Malone:#8 Robert E – I don’t have that feeling. I know tht to be true, because generally speaking, the Pubs don’t want to work for him (Judd Gregg being the exception).
Feb 6, 2009 - 2:36 pm 10. Jim Hu:Did you forget Kimba Wood?
Mar 6, 2009 - 1:00 am 11. Gekkobear:“doesn’t this show that the bookkeeping and administrative responsibilities of our present tax system are too much for the average person”
Um, are you calling Geithner, the Treasury Secretary; who they had to have as he was the only person with the economic intellect to get us out of this “normal”?
Either you’re disputing the statement that he was the only person capable of that job; with the economic and financial know-how… or you need to up your statement that even the smartest economic/financial person known was completely incapable of figuring his taxes.
Odd that I paid mine, isn’t it. I must be smarter in finances than the smartest person they can find in D.C.
You know, that; or they’re a bunch of crooks deliberately robbing the Government knowing they’ll get off scot-free as they have different rules for the rulers.
Mar 6, 2009 - 9:08 am