Analysis: Why rejection of a Cabinet nominee by Senate vote is so rare

The U.S. Capitol building is seen in Washington, DC on November 11. 

Francis Chung/POLITICO/AP

For all the drama generated every four years by Cabinet appointments, defeat of a nominee by a vote in the Senate is extremely rare.

The only time a nominee by a new president was rejected by a Senate vote occurred in 1989, when George H.W. Bush nominated John Tower, a former senator from Texas, to be his secretary of defense.

Tower was undone by stories of his excessive drinking and what press reports at the time referred to as “womanizing,” and which Pentagon files back then documented as placing “special attention on the secretaries” as an arms negotiator in Geneva. Tower was the subject of an FBI investigation into drinking and sexual harassment, part of a security clearance check.

Compare that situation with Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be attorney general. Gaetz was once the subject of a federal investigation for sex trafficking by the Department of Justice – the same agency Trump wants him to lead. Gaetz says he’s innocent. But the FBI files, which have never been released, seem likely to come up at his confirmation hearing.

Perhaps Trump’s nomination of Gaetz will test the yearslong streak of no Cabinet nominee being rejected by the Senate. Former House colleagues have said Gaetz bragged about sex with an underage girl. Plus, he has earned the enmity of some of his Republican colleagues, although Trump’s influence could overcome all of that.

Or maybe it will be Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the vaccine skeptic Trump is tapping to head the Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy has a history of drug use, although it’s rarely mentioned these days.

Rather than face the humiliation of a rejection vote in the Senate, Cabinet nominees are more frequently withdrawn when it becomes clear they cannot be confirmed.

Every recent president since Bill Clinton has withdrawn at least one of their initial nominees. Clinton’s initial nominee to be attorney general, Zoe Baird, withdrew her nomination after admitting she employed undocumented immigrants to watch her child.