Tenure of Office

Hillary Clinton sustained a blood clot after a concussion that caused her congressional testimony on the Benghazi debacle to be postponed indefinitely. She has since been released from the hospital and is taking blood thinners to get rid of the clot.  Let me just say that I hope the Secretary of State has a speedy recovery.

Her condition, obviously, has caused even more uncertainty about when she'll be able to testify about Benghazi, and it's even caused concerns about 2016.  Let me deal with that first: I actually saw on Facebook a post urging Mrs. Clinton to get well soon because the Democratic Party needs her in 2016.  Well, that sounds pretty selfish, doesn't it?  Someone wants her to get well just so she can run for President, even though she hasn't yet decided whether to do so? And what does it say about Democrats who feel so insecure, they think Mrs. Clinton is their only hope for keeping the White House in 2016?  They really don't have anyone else? 

But then, what does it say about Republicans who, until it was announced that Mrs. Clinton had a blood clot, threatened to have John Kerry's confirmation hearings for the job of Secretary of State delayed until she testified about Benghazi?  Senate Republicans had already made it clear that they see a Cabinet officer serving at their pleasure, not the President's.  Their threats to block Kerry's confirmation hearings also suggest that they, not the President, have the power to accept or reject a Cabinet officer's resignation.  If they keep delaying Kerry's confirmation hearings, they'll essentially be telling Mrs. Clinton to stay on the job in spite of her condition until she testifies about Benghazi . . . in other words, they'll be saying that they don't care how bad off she is physically, they won't let her quit until she does as she's told.  If the Republicans do that, they'll prove to be bigger rhyme-with-glass-poles than I thought they had the capacity to be.  

But then again, not too many Republicans are even buying the suggestion that she's even ill.  Various righties have insisted that Mrs. Clinton has been faking a concussion to avoid testifying about Benghazi, and Sean Hannity has even been snickering in making his accusations.  The news of the clot has not caused a rush of apologies from said righties, although noted foreign policy non-expert John Bolton has made insinuations about her health as she possibly prepares for a 2016 presidential run.  

What do I think? Well, since this is an opinion blog, you should have been expecting me to tell you what I think.  But here it is: Hillary Clinton should resign when she wants to, and if John Kerry hasn't been confirmed by then, President Obama can simply name an acting Secretary of State until he is.  And besides, the longer John Kerry waits to be confirmed as Secretary of State, the longer he stays in the Senate . . . giving Massachusetts Democrats more time to get their act together before the inevitable special election for his seat.  Mrs. Clinton can always testify about Benghazi as an ex-Secretary of State.  And after all that ridicule over her health from the right, I think she should run for President in 2016, just to spite them.

As for Republicans in general and Senate Republicans in particular calling the shots on who can be in the President's Cabinet . . . there's a precedent for that.  In 1867, a Republican Congress passed over Democratic President Andrew Johnson's veto the Tenure of Office Act, which stated that a presidential appointee in an executive office could not be fired by the President without Senate approval. This was done primarily to prevent Johnson from dismissing Lincoln holdovers, with the protection of one Lincoln holdover particularly in mind - Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.  When Johnson tried to oust Stanton in 1868, hoping to force a trial of the law's constitutionality, he got a trial he didn't expect; the House impeached him.  (The Senate acquitted him when votes for conviction fell one vote short of the required two-thirds majority, and the Tenure of Office law was repealed in 1887.)  Before Andrew Johnson was vilified by historians for being racist, he was lauded by historians for defending the face of the Constitution in the face of a clearly unconstitutional law.   Ironically, the Republicans are re-affirming the spirit of the Tenure of Office Act as a show of racism towards a black President.