Senator No
Opinion Journel, May 25, 2001
Hey, we got one right! On Wednesday we predicted that if Ted Olson's nomination
to be solicitor general came to the Senate floor, Hillary Clinton would vote
against it, and yesterday she did just that. Then again, so did 46 other Democrats.
The Senate approved Olson, 51-47, with Georgia's Zell Miller and Nebraska's
Ben Nelson joining all 49 Republicans in support. (Jim Jeffords, whose divorce
from the GOP is pending, didn't vote--still back in Vermont, we guess.)
What's astonishing, though, is that Hillary also voted against the nominations of Viet Dinh and Michael Chertoff to top Justice Department jobs. Dinh was confirmed by a 96-1 vote, Chertoff 95-1. What motivated Hillary to vote against nominees who were acceptable to such left-wing Demorats as Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer and Paul Wellstone? Her spokeswoman, Karen Dunn, says: "Based on information she had, she did not believe these individuals had the background or judgment to be elevated to such high positions of responsibility."
Yeah, right. Here's a more likely explanation: Chertoff is a former counsel to the Senate Whitewater Committee, and Dinh worked for the Whitewater independent counsel's office. (In this Frontline interview, Dinh talks about the mysterious disappareance of Hillary's billing records, among other things.) Clearly Hillary could not bring herself to vote to confirm nominees who had investigated her own wrongdoing.
This has got to be the lamest act of political payback we've ever heard of. In Olson's case, Democrats at least made a half-serious effort to sink his nomination. Hillary didn't even bother to enlist a single fellow Democrat to join her in voting against Dinh and Chertoff, thereby making it clear that her motives were purely personal. If we were Dinh or Chertoff, we'd wear Hillary's "no" vote as a badge of honor.
HENCH adds: Just what New York deserves.
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