Columnist Jon Ralston: Abraham is tough call for Reid, Ensign

Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2001 | 9:51 a.m.

Jon Ralston, who publishes the Ralston Report, writes a column for the Sun on Sundays and Wednesdays. Ralston can be reached at 870-7997 or through e-mail at ralston@vegas.com

"(The president) shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the Supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law ..."

-- U.S. Constitution, Article 2

SO WHAT IS the role of a U.S. senator in confirming Cabinet appointments, since it is not spelled out in the Constitution? Or more specifically, what do Nevada's two members of the Club of 100 think their roles should be?

Senior Sen. Harry Reid has said he believes senators should act as jurors in looking at George W. Bush's appointees -- presumably that means no prejudgments or litmus tests. Junior Sen. John Ensign says that "in general, if a person is qualified, has integrity, will follow the rule of law, that the president should basically get his choice."

Fine. Reasonable stances on the surface. But interesting questions are raised by Attorney General-designee John Ashcroft, whose anti-gaming statements actually don't worry me so much because he doesn't have much jurisdiction there, but even more so by energy nominee Spencer Abraham.

If Reid and Ensign believe that Abraham is an advocate of putting a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, and will do all he can to see that it happens, why shouldn't that be a litmus test? This is where rhetoric can lap common sense, where partisan whispers can be louder than public pronouncements.

"We're very concerned about what's going to happen under a Bush administration," Reid said in the Los Angeles Times this week. "Abraham voted against us on everything we did. Our best hope at this stage is to keep the nuclear power industry out of this and let the site be determined on good science."

So if the senator believes Abraham is an insidious choice for Nevada, how can he vote to confirm him? Reid said over the weekend that he does not believe the nominee's stance on nuclear waste would hold up Abraham's confirmation, which, of course, is true because very few senators care about the issue. But he also wouldn't commit to voting against him, either.

Ensign chatted with Abraham on Tuesday and came away optimistic and likely to vote to confirm him. Ensign said Abraham told him that as a senator he was "representing his constituents" when he voted several times to send waste to Yucca Mountain -- constituents justifiably worried about waste at nuclear plants in the ex-senator's home state of Michigan. "But now," Ensign added, "he represents President Bush and he knows the promises Bush made in the campaign."

Those promises, Ensign said, were to veto interim storage (an idea abandoned, it appears, by the nuclear power industry) and to not sign a dump bill until the Nevada site is deemed safe. Those didn't seem like much during the campaign -- especially since Bush never said a word and communicated only through factotums -- but Ensign remains sanguine.

Ensign also bent Abraham's ear about transmutation as an alternative to geologic disposal -- a pitch he has made to more than a half dozen senators in the last week or so, including during a recent sojourn in Florida. Ensign's theory is that the political momentum eventually could grow so great that it can't be stopped -- unless an alternative is found to divert that not-in-my-backyard freight train. "It's not a foregone conclusion, but it's a mostly gone conclusion," Ensign said Tuesday.

A brief digression: What if Ensign is right about transmutation, and that he can persuade other senators, Abraham and even the nuclear industry to consider it as an alternative? Sounds crazy, doesn't it, that policy could affect a process that has been politically driven since Screw Nevada I in 1987? No crazier than the notion that a bunch of rhetoric about lying down on Interstate 15 or resolutions against the dump passed by public bodies will affect the decision-makers in Washington. And no more loopy than actually letting a discussion of benefits take place and not treating those who dare raise the subject as quislings.

The only problem either senator has in voting to confirm Abraham is that his views on nuclear waste are well known before the hearing. If Abraham decides to revert to senatorial form, what will Ensign and Reid say then, that they couldn't have anticipated his behavior? That's a role neither want to find themselves in later in Bush's term.

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