Courtesy Calls

Seemingly polite practice by presidential nominees is really sabotage of Senate’s checks and balance

WASHINGTON – They are graciously termed ”courtesy calls,” but the practice of Presidential nominees’ private visits with Senators before confirmation hearings corrupts the constitutional requirement that the Senate provide advice and consent on Presidential appointments.

The practice, dating perhaps to the late 1960’s, is also degrading to nominees who may be pressured in a private conversation to discuss subjects that are, from the standpoint of the public interest, better dealt with in open hearings.
One newspaper reported on July 17 that ”the third day of Sandra O’Connor’s round of Congressional courtesy calls was capped by a session with conservative Senator Jesse Helms.” The public and other Senators do not know what President Reagan’s nominee to the United States Supreme Court said to Mr. Helms nor what Mr. Helms said to her.

Let it be writ large: I am not objecting to the nomination of Mrs. O’Connor. Rather, my objection is to the now common practice by which nominees request courtesy calls on Senators, who find it ungracious not to accept.

It is possible that these calls are purely social. On the other hand, there is nothing to prevent a Senator from doing what comes naturally – asking an ambassadorial nominee, for example, to look carefully into a problem that some constituent may have in the country to which the ambassador is going.

And there is nothing to prevent