Bush's Nominations and Number 76 of the Federalist Papers

I've been watching Bush's nominations over the past few weeks with a bit of a bemused eye. I find it really goofy that a guy with the mental horsepower of a pea is recommending candidates - based on their intelligence, experience, moral character...

In light of these recent events, several smarty-farty lawyers over at the Legal Theory Blog (http://lsolum.blogspot.com/archives/2005_10_01_lsolum_archive.html#112834852634675411)
pulled up Alexander Hamilton's portion of Number 76 of the Federalist Papers. I robbed them because I liked the passage so much, and I thought I would share. Pretty insightful, in a nostradamus predictor kind of way.

"To what purpose then require the co-operation of the Senate? I answer, that the necessity of their concurrence would have a powerful, though, in general, a silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity. In addition to this, it would be an efficacious source of stability in the administration.

It will readily be comprehended, that a man who had himself the sole disposition of offices, would be governed much more by his private inclinations and interests, than when he was bound to submit the propriety of his choice to the discussion and determination of a different and independent body, and that body an entier branch of the legislature. The possibility of rejection would be a strong motive to care in proposing. The danger to his own reputation, and, in the case of an elective magistrate, to his political existence, from betraying a spirit of favoritism, or an unbecoming pursuit of popularity, to the observation of a body whose opinion would have great weight in forming that of the public, could not fail to operate as a barrier to the one and to the other. He would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative stations, candidates who had no other merit than that of coming from the same State to which he particularly belonged, or of being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure."