Collateral damage

Editor's note: This is an updated and revised version of a column first appearing online-only Wednesday.

U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton held up the nomination as ambassador to the Bahamas of a woman he believed to be perfectly admirable.

He was mad, as usual. It was over something the woman had absolutely nothing to do with.

Then the woman died after more than 800 days of having her nomination held up, first by U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and then, since last fall, by Cotton.

She lives, though, as a symbol of Washington's silly--no, vile--partisan game-playing.

Put her down as collateral damage. Put down relevance and decency and fairness as collateral victims along with her.

Cotton was irate this time over news in September that Secret Service agents had gained access to, and leaked, unflattering information about a Republican congressman. The information was that the chairman of the House committee overseeing the Secret Service, U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, had once applied for a position with the Secret Service and been turned down.

Cotton first put a hold on President Barack Obama's ambassadorial nominees to Sweden and Norway as well as the Bahamas. It was quite the non sequitur. Ambassadors can't do anything about the Secret Service.

But, seeing progress in the Obama administration's investigation into the privacy breach, Cotton lifted his hold on the Sweden and Norway nominations. But not seeing enough progress to suit him, he left hanging the Bahama nominee, Cassandra Butts, a Harvard classmate and friend of Obama who learned only recently that she had leukemia, and soon died, at 50.

Columnist Frank Bruni in the New York Times assailed Cotton in this matter Monday. He reported that Butts had gone to see Cotton about her delay and that Cotton had told her he knew she was a close friend of Obama and that he wanted to "inflict pain" on the president for the slow-moving investigation toward punitive action against the Secret Service agents.

Bruni reported that Cotton's office did not dispute Butts' account.

I asked for confirmation of that, and Caroline Rabbitt, communications director for Cotton, responded as follows in an email:

"We didn't contest the version [Bruni] presented to me initially via email, but I dispute his characterization in the actual piece that Tom chose this nominee to 'inflict pain.' In reality, he chose three of President Obama's political appointees as opposed to career foreign service officers or employees ...

"DHS [Homeland Security] announced discipline last week of Secret Service agents and consideration was being given to lifting the hold on Cassandra Butts' nomination, but our office was informed of her death shortly after receiving the news about DHS.

"Additionally, when DHS made partial progress in imposing discipline on lower level officials, Tom lifted his holds on the two other nominees and gave a floor speech supporting the nominees on the floor of the Senate. I know he would have done the same thing for Cassandra Butts once that hold was lifted ...

"Finally, I would note that DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson called Tom in February to discuss the hold and promised him the latest round of discipline would be announced in 'a few weeks.' Yet it took nearly four months before they announced anything.

"Senator Cotton had a great deal of respect for Ms. Butts and her career and his deepest sympathies are with her family and friends as they mourn her loss."

You can and will make your own judgments about that, as I now will, as follows:

The too-common practice by which lone-wolf senators place holds on political appointees to which they have no specific objection, but because they want to leverage singular authority over an executive agency's regulatory actions or policies, is abhorrent.

U.S. Sen. John Boozman, for example, is holding up the confirmation of a top appointee to the Environmental Protection Agency, not because he has any objection to the nominee, but because he is displeased with a water-quality modeling project in the Illinois River in Arkansas.

But Cotton's action is even more detestable. This woman had nothing remotely to do with the Secret Service. Cotton professes high regard for her. She was singled out, according to Cotton's spokesman, not to "inflict pain," but, owing to her personal closeness to Obama, "to get the president's attention."

Alas, our state's junior senator has a fast-earned reputation for Obama-disdaining irrelevance, beginning with his attempt to undercut the administration's foreign policy with a direct and fortunately ineffectual communication with Iran.

So to conclude this particular and regrettable episode with proper context and perspective: A generally lauded woman named Cassandra Butts should have spent some of her last days as ambassador to the Bahamas. But she was denied that courtesy. I blame Arkansas voters for putting Cotton in the U.S. Senate. And I blame the Senate for rules giving entirely too much power to egregious mistakes voters make in individual states.

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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at [email protected]. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

Editorial on 06/12/2016

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