Jonathan Bernstein, Columnist

How to Overvet an Obama Nominee

The cost in time of excess vetting is significantly higher than the cost in time of losing a nomination fight.

September 16, 2014 at 7:27 PM UTC

Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics. A former professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio, he wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.

Debo Adegbile's nomination to head the Civil  Rights Division foundered because of his work defending as death-row inmate. — Debo Adegbile's nomination to head the Civil Rights Division foundered because of his work defending as death-row inmate.

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Here's the lesson from the latest case of poor vetting of an executive branch nominee: Do less checking, not more.

Debo Adegbile dropped his bid to head the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department yesterday, months after his nomination was killed by filibuster in March. According to Adegbile, the opposition to his nomination -- including from several Democrats -- on the grounds that he had previously, as a lawyer, defended a cop-killer, came as a surprise to both him and the White House. If so, that's a clear case of poor vetting. Anyone with good political instincts should have been alert to the possibility that Adegbile's work on behalf of death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal could blow up the nomination. And when the White House chose to move forward with the nomination anyway, it should have been prepared for what happened.1