Two interesting--and historically significant--votes in the Senate today. Thirteen Dems voted against the confirmation of Condoleeza Rice as Secretary of State--the highest number ever to vote against a nominee for the position during the last 100 years.* And in a straight party-line vote, the Judiciary Committee forwarded Alberto Gonzales' name to the Senate by a 10-8 margin. While Judiciary's Dems are more liberal than the party as a whole, the tally suggests that perhaps 35-40 senators will vote against Gonzalez in the final tally.

Along with Defense and Treasury, State and the AG round out the big four of cabinet offices. To have nominees to both positions attract such strong opposition, simultaneously, is unprecedented.

What criteria is the Senate supposed to use in evaluating cabinet nominees? Article II, Section 2, which addresses the issue, includes cabinet officials with judges and treaties in the"advice and consent" clause, but, in practice, the Senate has tended to give Presidents greater leeway regarding cabinet officials than on judicial appointments or treaties, which are, after all, of a more permanent nature.

The Rice and Gonzales appointments are somewhat unusual in that both have been implicated in what appear to be policy errors--assuming that WMDs existed in Iraq, saying it was OK to not follow the Geneva Convention for the Gitmo prisoners--during the administration's first term. Moreover, as Andrew Sullivan has argued most persuasively, Gonzales' nomination almost certainly will have negative international ramifications, in that it will be interpreted as US confirmation of approving torture. In this respect, the closest historical comparison is Richard Nixon's decision to elevate Henry Kissinger to be secretary of state in 1973; Kissinger attracted seven negative votes, despite intense opposition in the Senate to many of the foreign policy decisions with which Kissinger was associated. On the other hand, Kissinger was perceived as having a more flexible intellect than Rice has demonstrated.

Do these tallies, however, suggest that we'll see a more robust Congress over the next couple of years? I doubt it. Perhaps the most troubling comment of the debate came from John McCain, hardly a Bush lackey. The Arizona senator questioned the need for a debate on Rice, since she was certain of confirmation."So I wonder why we are starting this new Congress with a protracted debate about a foregone conclusion. I can only conclude that we are doing this for no other reason than because of lingering bitterness over the outcome of the election." Quite possibly so--but the partisanship in both of these votes is on both sides, since it would be hard to make a case that either Rice or Gonzales did particularly good jobs in the positions that they previously occupied.

The theory that the Senate--of all bodies--should bypass debate on issues that enjoy overwhelming support suggests how different Congress has become in recent years, with less and less support in either body, and especially the Senate, for defending the institutional prerogatives that received strong backing (depending on the issue, variously from right and left in the Senate) during the 1960s and 1970s.

*-In the 19th century, Henry Clay attracted more votes against his confirmation (and, as Richard Henry Morgan points out in comments), a much higher percentage of senators voted against Clay. The position of Secretary of State, however, was much different at the time--as much a foreign policy position as a stepping stone to the presidency.