The Senate should confirm Todd Blanche as Attorney General, not because confirmation hearings are pleasant, not because senatorial tempers are irrelevant, and not because any president is owed his preferred officer without scrutiny. The Senate should confirm him because the Constitution provides a process for testing executive nominees, because that process has now occurred in public, and because republics do not improve when they confuse ordinary political abrasion with disqualifying defect.
The facts before us are spare but sufficient. Todd Blanche participated in a confirmation hearing for Attorney General. The hearing lasted multiple hours. He faced questioning from senators. Some exchanges were characterized as testy. Republican senators on the committee hold the votes that determine whether the nomination advances. That is not a constitutional crisis. It is a confirmation hearing.
The office at issue matters. The Attorney General is not a decorative adviser. The office sits at the point where presidential authority, federal prosecution, institutional restraint, and public confidence in the Department of Justice meet. A prolonged vacancy or a cycle of serial failed nominations can damage a department that depends on hierarchy, delegated authority, and the perception that lawful decisions are made through settled channels. American history gives many examples of offices functioning imperfectly under acting leadership, but it gives few examples in which institutional drift improved because the Senate treated friction itself as a veto.
The strongest argument against confirmation is not irrational. It is the cautionary case advanced throughout this debate: that “testy” exchanges may signal evasiveness, unresolved questions, or future liabilities; that the Senate’s advice and consent role is supposed to be meaningful; and that investing hours in a hearing does not oblige senators to ratify a weak choice. That is all true as far as it goes. The Senate is not a notary public. A hearing is not a coronation. If questioning reveals a profound defect of character, inability, or constitutional unfitness, rejection is proper.
But the argument fails when it turns a mood into a standard. Confirmation hearings for high office, especially for Attorney General, are adversarial by design. The Senate has never treated visible tension as novel evidence of hidden disqualification. On the contrary, our history suggests the opposite. Since the early republic, nominees to powerful legal and judicial posts have faced pointed, partisan, and often performative questioning. Some senators ask to illuminate. Some ask to provoke. Some ask to build a record for later campaigns. None of that is new, and none of it tells us, by itself, whether a nominee should be confirmed.
This is where historical memory matters. The Senate’s advise and consent function exists to test capacity and legitimacy, not to manufacture universal comfort. If every testy exchange becomes presumptive proof of danger, then the standard for confirmation quietly changes from fitness to frictionlessness. No serious student of American institutions should want that. The offices that matter most are the very ones most likely to attract bruising hearings. A republic that demands serenity from every nominee in every contentious moment will either leave offices vacant or incentivize nominees to say nothing of substance.
There is also a structural point that deserves more respect than it usually receives in daily political commentary. The constitutional system does not ask whether a nominee is the least controversial human being imaginable. It asks whether the president has nominated, and whether the Senate, after public scrutiny, will consent. That process necessarily includes political judgment. Republican senators on the committee hold decisive votes for advancement. Some critics hear that as proof of partisanship. But committee majorities have always mattered. The legitimacy of the process lies not in the absence of politics, but in politics being conducted through visible institutions, recorded votes, and public accountability.
The opposing side in this debate often slipped into a different standard, one that sounds prudent but is actually corrosive. It says, in essence, that unless all doubts are resolved, the nomination should be delayed or denied. That formula would have surprised much of American history. Doubt is normal. Dissent is normal. Uncomfortable questioning is normal. The Senate’s task is not to eliminate uncertainty from public life, an impossible ambition. Its task is to make a constitutional judgment under conditions of uncertainty. Responsible self-government depends on that distinction.
There is, to be fair, a pragmatic case as well. The Department of Justice benefits from confirmed leadership. A multi-hour hearing has already taken place. Senators have asked their questions. The committee has developed a record. To restart the search because some exchanges were heated would impose real costs on the department and on the Senate without any demonstrated corresponding benefit in the facts we actually have. The better version of pragmatism, however, is not mere impatience. It is institutional prudence. Fill the office once scrutiny has been had, unless scrutiny has shown a concrete disqualifier. Here, on the facts presented, we have process, not proof of unfitness.
That is why the “signals” argument, though intelligent, remains incomplete. Yes, hearings generate signals. But signals must be interpreted in context. A testy moment may indicate weakness, or senatorial grandstanding, or disagreement over policy, or the ordinary stress of a nationally televised examination. History teaches caution in overreading such moments. Washington is littered with examples of people who performed smoothly in hearings and governed poorly, as well as people who endured rough hearings and served competently. Institutions survive by evaluating records and roles, not by elevating atmospherics over constitutional function.
The deeper issue is whether we still believe in the distinction between scrutiny and paralysis. The modern temptation is to treat any unresolved discomfort as a reason to stop the machinery of government. That temptation flatters our sense of vigilance, but it weakens the durable habits of republican administration. The Senate should be exacting. It should ask hard questions. It should force nominees to defend themselves in public. It should even permit testy exchanges if that is what serious oversight requires. But after that, it should decide.
Confirming Todd Blanche would not mean that senatorial concerns were invalid, nor would it imply that every answer he gave was ideal. It would mean something more modest and more important: that the constitutional process has been used for its intended purpose, and that ordinary political conflict is not enough reason to disable a major executive office. The long American record counsels against inventing a new norm in which contentious hearings become self-executing arguments for rejection.
The Senate should confirm Todd Blanche as Attorney General because constitutional government requires more than suspicion, more than vibes, and more than the theater of indignation. It requires institutions that can scrutinize, judge, and then govern. On the facts we have, that means a vote to confirm.