Posted by
DD on Sunday, May 27, 2007 4:47:29 AM
When confronted with charges of partisanship, many elected officials run for cover (a.k.a. canned responses about the virtues of "working across the aisle" followed by a proud reference to the "broad bipartisan support" their latest Sense of the Senate resolution received).
Though it has taken on a new meaning in today's political landscape, partisanship, I believe, is best defined as adherence to a consistent, overarching political philosophy and taking positions on issues based on the best solutions that result from a practical application of that philosophy to problems. One of Reagan's basic assumptions he always brought to the proverbial drawing board was that, in most cases, private citizens or privately owned companies do things better, faster and more efficiently than government. Applying that philosophy to taxes, for example, produces a simple solution: let people keep more of their own money.
Admittedly, partisanship carried too far would lead to absurd results (e.g. trying to eliminate taxes altogether). But this is not usually the context in which the partisanship accusation is lobbed at public figures. For example, the New York Times recently ran an opinion piece decrying the practice of allowing a candidate's political philosophy to influence decisions regarding the promotion and/or hiring of U.S. Attorneys. The author does not explain why this is a bad thing, presumably hoping that his readers will assume partisanship in the hiring process for any government official is automatically a no-no. Regrettably, most of the American public probably does make this premature conclusion. However, the U.S. Attorney position is a great example of when partisanship is not only permissible, but desirable.
In an ideal world, prosecutors' offices would have the resources necessary to prosecute all crimes with equal vigor. In the real world, U.S. Attorneys must prioritize and exercise prosecutorial discretion in determining what violations of the law will be prosecuted and which will not. This is possibly one of the most value-laden processes performed in the entire federal government, and it is done by an unelected official. Surely a certain degree of insulation from political pressure is necessary for the proper functioning of a prosecutor's office. However, like judges (for whom political independence is arguably even more important), prosecutors are appointed by people who are subject to political pressure because in a representative democracy, anyone with substantial power exercising discretionary, value-laden authority must be subject in some way, however attenuated, to the will of the people. The fact of the matter is, the only way you and I can influence who is choosing which federal crimes are prosecuted in our neighborhoods is to vote for the President. Since Presidential candidates don't explicitly identify every prosecutor they would appoint if they were elected, we as voters must rely on the President's ideology and party affiliation as a reasonable indicator of the type of prosecutors they would appoint. The President and Attorney General, in turn, must rely on the ideology and political philosophy of potential candidates in the hiring process for U.S. Attorneys as predictors of the type of prosecutor they would be.
Furthermore, if a President or his Attorney General were not allowed to take into account ideological considerations, voters would have no recourse in the event a prosecutor were to have different priorities than the general public.
Partisanship in the hiring of U.S. Attorneys is a good thing, and I imagine many of those who disagree will have a change of heart should a Democrat win in '08.